Welcome to our occasional series of posts by guest bloggers.
We are pleased that Iggy Patel of Halo Able Tech has taken the time to write this blog.
Much is talked about the Human Rights Act 1988 and it is often ridiculed as having given our sovereignty away to Europe by the powers that be. We are led to believe that a New Bill of Rights may better support the UK needs. It may do, but don’t we first need to see this plant to even classify if it’s in the same genre? It’s been some time since it’s been mooted yet to date apart from the name I can’t find any substance behind it. Do we really need to change or introduce a new Bill to get back our Sovereignty? Or is it that we are just lacking some common sense! I’m no legal expert, but I was taught, that we had signed up to a treaty after the last war in order to help us bring peace and a common structure. Surely this in itself is a worthy cause, peace and no war. Or have we now become a society that is so self-conscious that working together as a society is no longer parse.
Reading some of the news that regularly comes across my screen would strongly lead me to believe this is the case. Looking after I, over the last 10 years has led to unprecedented poverty levels, elderly and disabled dying due to government restrictions on help, Children going to school without food. One of the main factors of bringing in the HRA was to allow the judiciary the right to consider Human rights act issues in UK courts?
However, I don’t see this happening very regularly or at all. The cases we do hear about all tend to be heard in Europe. Now, again, I’m no expert, but nearly every case I’ve read which has gone to Europe for judgement I have 9/10 times always predicted the case. The reason behind this is I believe that the European Courts always look at the ethos or purpose behind the act or contravention i.e. what is it supposed to do, why have this legislation anyway? What’s it about? Whereas the UK judiciary tends to take much more use of the literal meaning of the legislation, which is not always the fairest. In fact, the judges in this country do not just make decisions on what they think, but they too have rules to follow when interpreting legislation which includes passing judgements using rules and there is even one called the Literal Rule.
Here’s an example; when it came to careers rights, the UK courts looked at disability legislation and stated correctly that only disabled people are covered. Whereas when the case went to Europe a sensible approach was taken, in order to protect disabled people you needed to protect carers. That to me is common sense. So I like our little rose as it is, it does what it needs to, if we replace it, without carefully examining whatever comes next it could be an inferior species or even a weed…
The views and opinions contained in this blog are those of the author and not necessarily those of JUST Lincolnshire