Why would the Tories repeal the Human Rights Act?

I'm writing this, partly because of a point raised in the Guardian today about the Human Rights Act and European Convention, but mainly as a response to a debate that took place this morning between @ByrneTofferings and @thedancingflea on the same subject.

The Tories, it would appear, are seeking to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Their reason? The Human Rights Act 'has undermined the Government's ability to deal with crime and terrorism'. Yet, as Thomas Byrne rightly pointed out this morning, "It [The European Convention] was only ever meant to be a minimum standard for states that signed upto it - free to add what they want." Quite. The ECHR isa minimum standard for signatory states. It safeguards for citizens of member states a number of fundamental basic rights - life, a fair trial, privacy, etc. - rights which it is essential to observe in the fight against terrorism. The observation of human rights inevitably undermines Government's power and impedes their influence, that is the whole point.

This is not to say that I think the government is significantly weaker in the fight against terrorism because it has to respect those pesky human rights in the process. The truth is that we have the longest period of pre-charge detention in the free world, the largest DNA database in the world and plans afoot for an 'expensive, unnecessary and intrusive' National Identity Register and ID card system. This is what the government have managed apparently with their ability to deal with Terrorism already undermined. Yet it begs the question, with all these superlatives flying around, why other countries (including those not signatories to the ECHR) don't feel it necessary to enact such draconian measures in the name of counter-terrorism.

The answer to that question is complex, but at the heart of it is the fact that an over-arching state prying ever-more into the everyday lives of law-abiding citizens is not the way you deal with the threat of terrorists vying to destroy the thread of liberty that runs to the core of our nation and our society.

If we view the rights provided by the ECHR as a "minimum standard" then, surely, you'd have to apply those minimum standards to a British Bill of Rights. If not, you've have to accept that the the Bill of Rights is neglecting or omitting rights that Britain, as founder signatories in 1950, deemed fundamental and therefore unfit for purpose compared to it's 1998 predecessor. It seems difficult to argue that the ECHR goes further than a minimum standard, given the superlative counter-terrorism regime we have in place at the moment.

So why are the Tories calling for the Human Rights Act to be repealed and replaced with a British Bill of Rights? Byrne has a pragmatic view on the issue with regards to human rights practice in the UK. A Bill of Rights, he says, would 'reign in Euroscepticism' by 'legitimating the culture of human rights in the UK'. Essentially that the British people will warm to and accept human rights coming from Parliament but not, perhaps, from a supranational 'European' organisation which, to many, is synonymous with the EU.

Claire Spencer (thedancingflea), with whom I so often agree on the direction this country should be taking insofar as its relationship with Europe, suggests that such drastic measures would bedetrimental to our relationship with Europe as a whole. The EU is here, and it is getting more and more stable by the day. It's time we stopped pandering to the xenophobes and Eurosceptics and started putting forward the case for Europe.

I have been asked, if this means I want to pick apart the ECHR in order to strengthen it and make it the document that we need for an effective and workable system of human rights in the UK and Europe today. The answer is no, I do not. I believe the ECHR is an important minimum, a basis from which individual countries can build their own Human Rights agenda.

This is not to say that I disagree with the concept of a UK Bill of Rights. Not at all, I think the country needs one. The ECHR is great in giving us a basis, it also provides an influential body to look to, above the national government level, to which any and every citizen has a direct right of petition and call their government to account. The Human Rights Act is an important way to save the time and expense of always having to go to European Court, gives the British courts authority to interpret legislation in favour of the stated human rights and creates a culture of observance of human rights in government and within the legislature.

Further to these essentials, though, the country needs a domestic-level document to look to, something akin to the US Bill of Rights. Something codified and entrenched in more than just respect for the document. Something that, unlike the ECHR, deals with more than just individual freedoms, but which outlines fundamental basics for the relationship between the state and the individual and the limits thereof.

We don't need to repeal the HRA and replace it with a substandard Bill of Rights simply for fear of a backlash from Eurosceptics and a lack of courage to stand up and fight the corner of Europe. We need the Human Rights Act, for the job it does and then we need a Bill of Rights to deal with our domestic issues, the issues that don't apply universally to Europe but need to be addressed at home. The Bill of Rights that the Conservatives are proposing is not, I fear, such a document, but merely the Human Rights Act by another name, weakened and without reference to an internationally recognised standard.