British Bill of Rights: In defence of Michael Gove’s plans

Nothing so becomes Michael Gove as the contrast with his predecessor as Lord Chancellor and Minister of Justice, Chris Grayling. Last week Mr Gove, once one of the most unpopular ministers, basked in the plaudits of liberal Britain when he persuaded the Prime Minister to cancel Mr Grayling’s contract to supply prison training services to the Saudi Arabian government.

Not only that, but he has reversed Mr Grayling’s counterproductive ban on books in prisons; spoken movingly to the Conservative Party conference about the failures of our prison system; and is now reviewing the new courts fees that give defendants an incentive to plead guilty.

Even when he was Education Secretary, this newspaper supported some of Mr Gove’s policies, while recognising – as he appears to do himself – that his failure to bring teachers with him was damaging. So we are prepared to give him a hearing for his plan to repeal the Human Rights Act and to replace it with a British Bill of Rights. As we report today, and contrary to the common assumption that he wanted to delay the new Bill for as long as possible, he is pressing ahead with an accelerated timetable to try to get the Bill on the statute book next July.

The Independent on Sunday is a strong supporter of the European Convention on Human Rights, and of the Human Rights Act, which incorporates it into British law. We understand that some of the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights have been irritating and inconvenient for British governments. Sometimes, when they have forced the authorities to respect the rights of people associated with terrorism, they have encouraged populist politicians to pander to transient outrage by suggesting that Britain should reject the Court or even the Convention itself. Mr Grayling was one of those politicians, along with Theresa May, the Home Secretary.

The populist opportunists never got very far, because the question is more complicated than they pretended. Yes, the Strasbourg court has sometimes overreached itself, interpreting the Convention in ways that were not intended by its drafters – many of whom, incidentally, were British. But signing up to the Convention means accepting the Court. It is not possible to have one without the other.

The occasional bad ruling is a price to be paid for the rule of law – and in any case, the Court has sensibly given in to democratic pressure and is seeking to avoid conflict over questions such as prisoners’ votes. What is more, withdrawing from the Convention altogether would be a terrible idea. If Britain were to repudiate the Convention, it would give authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko a powerful argument that they should not take it seriously either.

That was why the Conservative Party settled on the compromise of replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. Without specifying what would be in the Bill of Rights, it was not clear to what extent this would mean retreating from Britain’s international obligations under human rights law.

Now it falls to Mr Gove to be explicit and to offend one wing of his party or the other. It seems likely that it will be the fundamentalist anti-Europeans who will be disappointed. Unless he is prepared to withdraw from the Convention, the most he can achieve is a cosmetic rewording of the Human Rights Act to allow British courts to be more flexible in following rulings of the European Court.

If that is the case, we defenders of human rights have little to fear. Let us hope that Mr Gove continues to impress us.