Blair's most urgent policy task

What is Tony Blair's most urgent policy task? Contrary to what you might think, it is not fixing Britain's NHS, or ending child poverty. No, it's gutting the Human Rights Act.

The UK's Human Rights Act is the equivalent of New Zealand's Bill of Rights Act. It implements the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights in British law, requiring courts to, where possible, interpret and apply the law so as to be consistent with those rights. The chief aim - and chief effect - of this legislation has been to prevent the British government from violating the human rights of those under its jurisdiction; the application of the HRA has (to list a few recent examples) freed suspected terrorists from indefinite detention, and forbidden the use of evidence extracted by torture, and looks set to bar the deportation of suspected terrorists to states which torture, even where the government has a "memorandum of understanding" that they will not be tortured (on the basis that they really aren't worth the paper they're written on). These rulings have incensed the increasingly authoritarian Blair government, and so now Blair is demanding that the law be gutted. According to the Observer, he wants to amend the law to require the courts to pay attention to "the rights of the community to basic security", and to allow the government to overrule the courts when they disagree with the rulings. And he describes this as one of his "most urgent policy tasks". So, the UK now has a Prime Minister who wants to remove fundamental rights and undermine the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. Again, you really have to wonder who the real threat to the British way of life is - terrorists, or Tony Blair.

One irony here is that it was Blair's government which passed the HRA in the first place, back when it cared about human rights rather than trying to stomp all over them. A second is that Blair's plan won't work. Gutting the HRA may mean the government wins in British courts - but people can always appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, who will apply the ECHR as written (rather than as Blair would like it to be written) - meaning that in cases such as arbitrary detention or deportation to torture, the British government will still lose. Someone seems to be aware of this, and a Downing Street source is quoted as saying that

A further possibility would be for Britain to consider withdrawing from specific clauses of the European rights convention if they led to court rulings which placed 'community safety' at risk.

But this is simply madness. The relevant articles - those protecting the right to life and the prohibition on torture, and banning punishment without law - are non-derogable, even in times of national emergency. The only way to withdraw from them is to withdraw from the ECHR itself, which would mean withdrawing from the EU (adherence to the ECHR being a condition of EU membership). And its not just the ECHR they'd have to withdraw from; the relevant rights are also protected in the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where they are similarly non-derogable. Is the UK going to withdraw from those as well?

If taken to its logical conclusion, Blair's desire to free himself from inconvenient human rights legislation would turn the UK into an international pariah. But even his plans to amend the HRA are bad enough. As the Observer points out in its accompanying editorial, the HRA protects citizens from abuse by the state. Blair's desire to amend the law to remove this protection is tantamount to an admission that his government wants to abuse people. And that is not something his citizens should tolerate.