Introduction

In this chapter we provide a brief history of European human rights law and procedures prior to the implementation of the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA, 1998). This is intended to explain the Act's relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights and other international human rights treaties. The main body of the chapter provides an account of the substance of the Act and key procedures associated with it. This is intended to provide a basic grounding in its provisions – its scope and limitations.

In this, and succeeding chapters, reference is made to a number of legal provisions and judgments. Those readers without access to a law library, can find many of the judgments and legal provisions on the internet. We provide a note of some of the key websites as Appendix III on page 121.

The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights

The European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) was finally incorporated into the domestic law of the United Kingdom on 2 October 2000. Since then its provisions and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) can be referred to directly in British courts (Section 2 of the 1998 Human Rights Act), and so far as is possible, our courts must reach decisions that are compatible with the Convention rights (Section 3 of the 1998 Human Rights Act).

Of course, even before its incorporation, the Convention exerted a strong influence over our courts and legislature. Ever since the UK ratified the Convention in 1950 and thereby agreed to be bound by the judgments of its Court, it has shaped – proactively or reactively – our legal system. Thus a finding by the Court in 1989 that restrictions on the rights of service users to access their social services files violated Article 8 (Gaskin v UK [1989]) led to the injustice being remedied by the enactment of the Data Protection Act in 1998. Almost certainly, however, the Convention's greatest legislative influence has resulted from parliament's conscious effort to ‘Strasbourg-proof ‘ new legislation.

The 1998 Human Rights Act has now elevated this process to a statutory obligation; Section 19 requiring that before the second reading of a Bill the relevant Minister must make “a statement of compatibility”, which is in effect formal assurance that the government addressed this question in the drafting of the Bill.