The Human Rights Act

After the Second World War, European governments including Britain worked together on an international treaty protecting basic rights and freedoms, and lawyers and diplomats from the UK helped draft it. The UK was among the earliest countries to sign the European Convention on Human Rights, doing so in 1950. For nearly fifty years, though, a person in Britain who felt those rights had been breached still had to take their case to an international court rather than a domestic one.

That changed with the Human Rights Act, passed in 1998, which brought the Convention's protections directly into UK law. Since then, government departments, councils, the police and other public bodies have been required to act in ways that respect these rights, and anyone who believes a public body has broken them can bring a claim before a UK court instead of pursuing the matter abroad. The Act did not invent new rights; it gave existing international commitments a route through the domestic courts, which is why it is often described as bringing rights home.