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Human Rights

Thanks for that parallel history lesson. The convention provided substantive protection for individuals against the violation of their rights by states. It ensured that the principles of democracy were strengthened by giving citizens a forum in which they could be heard if a Government—even a democratically-elected Government—sought to deny basic fundamental rights. That was a key step forward in enhancing democratic answerability. The European convention also declared those rights strongly, thus elevating the position of rights in society. It still does all those things. The convention was never intended to be a precise legislative document. The drafters recognised that rights could come into conflict with each another, so a solution was prescribed: flexibility. The ideal realisation of that flexibility was to let sovereign Governments determine the balance of rights in the context of their national circumstances and then let national courts determine whether that balance was correct in those circumstances. That flexibility allows what we in the UK would call local common sense to be engaged. Of course, British citizens had been going to the Strasbourg Court to enforce those rights against the UK Government, and that Court had done its best to understand the British context, but we did not have a national forum and the opportunity to maximise that local flexibility until the Human Rights Act made the convention rights enforceable here, as part of our domestic law.