SIA joins leading human rights organisations to warn against Government plans

We have joined with more than 50 organisations from across the human rights, equality and civil liberties sector to warn the Prime Minister against the ‘dire consequences’ of scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a new Bill of Rights.

Tearing up the Human Rights Act will unleash a Pandora’s Box of dire consequences for the UK and we desperately urge the Prime Minister to reconsider

The open letter, signed by SIA and organisations including Amnesty International, Liberty, The British Institute of Human Rights, Stonewall and Friends of the Earth, calls for an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister and cites three major implications of the proposals:

• that such a move will undermine international law and damage the UK’s reputation and ability to act as a human rights advocate on the global stage.
• that repealing the Act risks breaching the Good Friday Agreement and threatens the delicately balanced peace settlement in Northern Ireland.
• and that it would remove the current obligations on police to properly investigate violence against women and girls, making it even harder for victims to challenge police failings at a time when public confidence in that area is already in crisis.

 

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s CEO, said: “Tearing up the Human Rights Act will unleash a Pandora’s Box of dire consequences for the UK and we desperately urge the Prime Minister to reconsider …. the Human Rights Act is the most significant piece of rights legislation in the UK and it plays an absolutely vital role in ensuring stability, justice and protection at home and abroad. This is no time to replace it with a watered-down substitute.”