The Government has said it is “very concerned” by any potential diminution of human rights protection in Northern Ireland which might arise from the British government’s proposed Bill of Rights.
The UK Bill of Rights, if enacted, would replace its Human Rights Act and have an impact on the application of the European Convention on Human Rights into British and Northern Irish law.
In a statement, the Department of Foreign Affairs said the ability to obtain remedies for breaches of the convention in domestic courts was a “fundamental commitment” under the Belfast Agreement. It said this was implemented by adopting the Human Rights Act.
The department said that when the Bill was first proposed last December, it set out its “serious concerns very clearly” to the UK government in writing and at the most recent meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
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A lawyer who represented families of nine innocent people shot dead by the British Army also said the abolition of the Human Rights Act would “row back” legal progress in the North. Pádraig Ó Muirigh said the introduction of the act more than 20 years ago “transformed” the inquest process — describing previous legislation as “toothless”.
He noted Northern Ireland’s longest running inquest into the deaths of 10 people killed in Ballymurphy, west Belfast, in 1971. He said there was “day and night” between last year’s findings and the original 1972 hearing which he branded a “sham”. Coroner Mrs Justice Siobhán Keegan found in May of last year that the 10 individuals were “all entirely innocent of any wrongdoing on the day in question”.
Mr Ó Muirigh said the significance of the incorporation of the convention in domestic law — via the Human Rights Act — in the Ballymurphy case cannot be overstated. It meant that increased powers were given in terms of compelling witnesses and disclosure of documents and, crucially, it led to families of victims being “front and centre” of the process with funded legal representation.
Liam Herrick, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, criticised the Bill of Rights. saying it was a “direct attack” on the Belfast Agreement. He called on the Irish Government to defend the rights protections under the agreement and to take all available steps to raise its concerns about these proposals with the UK authorities.
Prof Donncha O’Connell, a human rights expert at NUI Galway, said there was “an element of Europhobic dog-whistling mixed with long-standing malign intent” in the proposed Bill.
“If passed in its current form it will, of course, lead to more cases being decided against the UK in Strasbourg as it sets the British judiciary on a reckless and feckless collision course with the European Court of Human Rights,” he said. “Westminster can legislate all it likes to undermine the settled jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in these areas but none of this will change the law applied by the court in Strasbourg.”
