One of the biggest pledges of the Conservative party conference wasn’t actually made at the Tory conference. It’s being set out today by Chris Grayling and is the Tory plan to strip European judges of their powers over British laws.
The Conservatives will scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights which will leave the European Court of Human Rights as an advisory body to the UK. It will continue to use the same basic text of the European convention on human rights, as Grayling says ‘it’s never that document and those principles that is the problem’, but alongside it will be a number of caveats designed to restrict the way human rights laws can be used, for example on prisoner voting. MPs can add caveats if the court makes a ruling that contradicts the will of parliament. If the government loses a case in Strasbourg, it will consider the ruling, but will not be bound to obey it.
If the other members of the Council of Europe do not accept these measures before the Bill is passed, the Tories plan to leave the convention, but if they do, then they shall carry on as previously.
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