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Britain's most senior judge has declared that the Human Rights Act was a “revolutionary” invitation to the judiciary to make law in comments that will raise new debate about the future of the legislation.

Lord Neuberger, the President of the Supreme Court, told an audience in London that judges had “always been lawmakers” but that their powers had been significantly increased since the Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998.

He said that the legislation had given judges greater power to “make law” on moral and political issues which were previously been beyond their remit.

It had also given them a “quasi statute-writing” job that allowed them to “recast” any legislation passed by Parliament which they deemed to be incompatible with human rights.

Lord Neuberger’s comments came during a wide-ranging address in which he also called for greater judicial diversity to “enrich the law” and boost the “credibility” of the bench.

He also urged judges to make more use of their “humanity” when reaching verdicts and to be “more open” about how they decided cases.

His assessment of the Human Rights Act will, however, stimulate most debate and is likely to reinforce the desire of Conservative critics to press ahead with their plan to scrap the legislation if they win the general election.

One of the main Tory criticisms of the law is that it has shifted power from Parliament to the judiciary and restricted the ability of MPs to determine key issues.

Lord Neuberger said that the Act had had “a revolutionary effect” but had been a deliberate move by Parliament, then controlled by Labour, to hand more power to judges.

He told his audience: “The 1998 Act is not merely an authorisation, but an invitation, even a stipulation, by Parliament to the judiciary to “make law” in areas into which the judiciary has traditionally been reluctant to step or even conventionally prohibited from stepping.”

“Judges are now called upon more frequently to rule on moral and political issues, given that is what human rights involve. Before the 1998 Act, our role in relation to government acts was more circumscribed.”

Lord Neuberger said that judges also now had the power to declare entire legislation unlawful, but insisted that although “these judicial powers are new in the United Kingdom,” they had been given to the bench by Parliament and would be “unsurprising” in most other countries.

He said that many “legal and political thinkers” believed that such powers for the judiciary were also necessary to ensure that the “rule of law” prevailed.