The UN’s most senior human rights official has condemned the UK government’s proposal to scrap the Human Rights Act.

In an unusual intervention for a UN official, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the Conservative party’s threat to leave the European court of human rights (ECHR) was “profoundly regrettable”.

The Jordanian prince became the UN’s high commissioner for human rights last summer. He was speaking at a meeting of the United Nations Association UK .

The British bill of rights, promised in the Conservative election manifesto, will “break the formal link between British courts and the European court of human rights”. Judgments from Strasbourg will, in effect, become advisory and the UK’s supreme court will become supreme.

The justice minister, Dominic Raab, hit back at Zeid’s comments and said it was irresponsible to criticise UK government plans, which he insisted would strengthen human rights, before they had been announced.

Details of precisely how the bill of rights will operate are due to be announced by the justice secretary, Michael Gove, this autumn. Tory policy is to leave the convention if agreement cannot be reached with the ECHR and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.



The UN high commissioner’s comments, delivered in a speech at Guildhall in the City of London on Friday, reflect widespread opposition within the human rights community to the government’s proposals.

The European convention on human rights was constructed by British lawyers on their experience of the second world war, Hussein said. “It incorporated – the marks are still clearly visible – the older liberties of British common law.”

The ECHR in Strasbourg, he added, went on to become a permanent court, “among the most internationally respected tribunals of modern times” and a model for regional human rights courts in Latin America and Africa.

Improvements in British practice and policing that have been inspired by the European court, he explained, included stronger protection against child abuse, enhanced rights for people with disability, including mental disabilities, better care for the elderly, broader sexual orientation rights, including of gays and lesbians in the military, and the abolition of corporal punishment in schools.

“Recently, the government has announced it plans to ‘scrap’ the human rights act,” Hussein said. “This proposal may have a very significant impact on access to remedy for victims of human rights violations within the jurisdiction of the UK.



“If Britain – a key member of the human rights council, a founding member of the UN and a privileged, permanent member of the security council – is considering a move that will potentially weaken a vital regional institution upholding fundamental human rights guarantees, this would be profoundly regrettable; damaging for victims and human rights protection; and contrary to this country’s commendable history of global and regional engagement.

“Moreover, many other states, where civil society is currently threatened, may gleefully follow suit. Surely this is a legacy no British government would wish to inspire.”

Zeid prefaced his speech by describing his role as being “the world’s irritant to every government”.

Raab said: “A bill of rights will strengthen, not weaken, human rights. Our reforms will protect our fundamental freedoms, prevent abuse of the system and restore proper democratic accountability, so the application of human rights commands greater public confidence. It is irresponsible for any UN official to be criticising our plans without knowing what they are.”

Harriet Harman MP, the former deputy Labour leader, offered an olive branch to the government. If it abandoned its attempt to scrap the human rights act, she said, her party should not crow over the withdrawal.

“The climate we are creating on this debate is very important abroad,” Harman told a conference organised by the civil liberties organisation, Justice.

“We should be concerned about the effect our consultation is having on other countries. It seems to me that the government have locked themselves into a situation where they are hearing voices inside their own head.”

Lord Lester, the Liberal Democrat peer, said that that at the last meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg only Russia had approved of the UK government’s approach towards the enforcement of human rights. “The idea that the Conservatives should be setting an example like this on the rule of law strikes at the reputation of this country,” he told the Justice conference.