Conservative Party Conference: Human Rights Act off this year's agenda

The Tory proposal to replace the Act with a British Bill of Rights featured prominently at last year’s conference

The Tory election manifesto suggested scrapping the act would be top of Michael Gove's agenda (Reuters)

The one glaring omission from David Cameron’s first speech to the Conservative party conference since the election was the Human Rights Act.

The Tories made their pledge to replace the Act with a British Bill of Rights a key part of their election manifesto and the Prime Minister made it clear that scrapping the “hated” legislation would be top of his new Justice Secretary’s agenda following the election.

The policy featured prominently at last year’s conference, when Mr Cameron mentioned the Human Rights Act on no less than four occasions in his keynote address as he pledged to “scrap it once and for all”. But this year there was no mention of it at all.

The three words were also notable omissions from Justice Secretary Michael Gove’s speech on Tuesday, while Theresa May chose to avoid the subject too. It is a far cry from the six mentions of the act that appeared in Chris Grayling’s speech to conference last year when he was Justice Secretary.

It is a sign of the serious stumbling blocks in the way of the Government being able to abolishing the Human Rights Act, with several senior Tory MPs opposed and legal experts questioning the feasibility of creating a Bill of Rights that overrides the ECHR.

As the party braces itself for major divisions over the EU, Mr Cameron is keen not to split the party in another area.

Ministers have insisted plans for a British Bill of Rights would be published later this autumn and justice minister Dominic Raab has said it will give the UK Supreme Court supremacy over the European Court of Human Rights, but whether the two would be compatible is yet to be known.