Dominic Raab vows to overhaul ‘nonsensical’ Human Rights Act

Dominic Raab has pledged to overhaul the “nonsensical” Human Rights Act to prevent it from being abused by dangerous criminals.

The Justice Secretary signalled that reform of the Act was a key mission in his new job as he warned it had been exploited by dangerous foreign criminals to avoid deportation and offenders to deny victims justice.

Speaking at the Tory party conference in Manchester, Mr Raab cited the case of a drug dealer who assaulted his partner and then used the Human Rights Act to avoid being thrown out of the UK.

“There is one big change the public want to see,” he said. “Too often, they see dangerous criminals abusing human rights laws. 

“In one case, a drug dealer convicted of beating his ex-partner, a man who hadn’t paid maintenance for his daughter, then successfully claimed the right to family life to avoid deportation.

“It is absolutely perverse that someone guilty of domestic abuse could claim the right to family life to trump the public’s interest in deporting him from this country. We’ve got to bring this nonsense to an end.

“So today I can tell you that, under this Prime Minister and before the next election, we will overhaul the Human Rights Act to end this kind of abuse and restore some common sense to our justice system.”

Speaking later at a Tory fringe event hosted by the Spectator magazine, Mr Raab said he believed the reforms could be achieved without the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.

“It’s the way it has been interpreted, in particular the licence given to courts to adopt through judicial legislation ever more elastic interpretation of rights,” he said.

“We can fix that and assert human rights in a positive way to end abuses of the system but I don’t think we need to pull out of the European convention on Human Rights.”

Mr Raab also committed to strengthen freedom of speech, which he said had been eroded by political correctness or by campaigns, adding: “We should be the standard-bearer of individual liberty.”

He maintained that he was “pro-judge,” adding that he wanted to maintain and see a clear separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. He has previously warned that the distinctions have become blurred.

He told the conference his “number one priority” was to improve the safety of communities after the murder of Sarah Everard so women could walk home at night “without having to look over their shoulder in fear”.

Separately, he acknowledged it would take six months to a year to clear the backlogs of court cases to return to pre-pandemic levels.

He also suggested that he would back allowing asylum seekers who had entered the UK legally to take paid work, a move that he said could save the taxpayer money. At the moment, they are barred and limited to living on benefits.

“There’s an interesting question about whether it would save the taxpayer money to allow them time limited period of work,” he said.