The Human Rights Act was in the news yesterday (14th December 2021) because the Government published a long-awaited Report by the Independent Human Rights Act Review and alongside the Report, released a new consultation paper setting out the plans for how they want to replace our Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights. We’ve put together a summary of what’s happened so far and what might happen next. The history of Human Rights Law The Human Rights Act is a UK law that was passed by the UK parliament in 1998 and became law in October 2000.  Before that, there was (and still is) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. These are all connected and share the same core values. The Human Rights Act was passed by Parliament with cross-party support. It was introduced when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. He said he wanted to “bring these rights [in the ECHR] home” and to “give people in the United Kingdo...

This post was originally published on British Institute of Human Rights News .