I work for Amnesty and am increasingly concerned by what’s happening in the UK

Dominic Raab’s consultation on replacing the Human Rights Act will thwart the means by which ordinary people can access their rights

‘Dominic Raab is the new justice secretary who wants to pick and choose human rights – we need to defend our rights before they’re snatched away from us’ (Getty Images)

Earlier this year, I started my job as chief executive of Amnesty International UK. I assumed this would mean I’d be heavily focused on international crises – and I often am. I’ve made urgent representations on behalf of desperate people stuck in Afghanistan, appealed for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Anoosheh Ashoori and other British nationals held in Iran, talked about jailed activists in Saudi Arabia, and spoken out about the brutal treatment of protesters in Belarus.

But increasingly my concern has been occupied by the systematic dismantling of human rights protections underway here at home. It’s a methodical unpicking of the means by which a government and its decisions can be challenged and the thwarting of the means by which ordinary people can access their rights.

Dominic Raab, the new justice secretary, is leading the charge. Just a few weeks into the job, Mr Raab said he intended to “rein in rights” and today he gave shape to that ambition announcing a consultation on replacing the Human Rights Act.

Amnesty International passionately believes in the need to hold perpetrators of crimes to account. To pursue justice both internationally and domestically. And to ensure that all wrong-doers end up in the dock – from former heads of state like Slobodan Milošević, to the almost-unknown masked thug in a torture chamber in Syria or perpetrators of hate crimes in the Ukraine.

We will never stop fighting for rights to apply to everyone or accept that they can be forfeited. Human rights are universal – for “unpopular” individuals, as well as those for whom there’s an outpouring of sympathy. My suspicion is that citing a handful of cases where unpopular people have been shown to also have human rights is a deliberate tactic, a means to a more sinister end. At base, for all the lofty language about parliamentary sovereignty, this seems to be a way to let the government mark its own homework without judges reviewing whether they are staying within the law.

This is a government that has all too often found the law is getting in its way and its solution is to rewrite those laws. But the international human rights framework is not a sweet shop. Politicians are not entitled to pick and choose which rights should be “allowed” during their time in power, nor decide what they mean. That way lies autocracy.

All this matters, of course, because ministers plan to set up a system that would mean judicial review decisions it dislikes could be routinely overturned, as well as long-trailed government plans to dismantle parts of the landmark Human Rights Act, announced by Mr Raab this week, legislation which has been central in numerous high-profile legal battles.

This is likely, though, to prove far more unpopular than the government perhaps realises. Amnesty has regularly polled public attitudes on human rights, consistently finding that the public are staunchly opposed to moves by ministers to redraft rights to suit them. A clear majority of people in this country believe rights and protections should be permanent – not subject to change by the politicians of the day.

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But it’s not just the domestic arithmetic that matters here. There are global implications to the fact that our justice secretary regularly talks about reining-in rights and criticises international judgements with which the government disagrees. It damages our ability to insist that human rights are respected globally and weakens the entire international system by emboldening despots the world over to set their own rules.

All of this is a timely reminder of precisely why we need the Human Rights Act itself as an essential check on the vast powers of an overmighty state. Every time you hear a dubious story with sketchy details about someone raising their right to family life at a deportation hearing, remember the Windrush scandal and the many other cases where ordinary people turned to the act as a last resort in their darkest hour. Remember Hillsborough, remember victims of the Mid Staffs hospital scandal, remember the women embroiled in the spy cops scandal and think also of the Covid bereaved and their brave fight to get a simple inquiry out of a clearly reluctant and recalcitrant government.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. This isn’t about “overhauling” or “reforming” the Human Rights Act. This is about cutting off at the knees any attempt to hold this – and future – governments to account. We need to defend our rights before they’re snatched away from us.

Sacha Deshmukh is Amnesty International UK’s CEO