On 20 July 2022 the Government published its response to the call for evidence on Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation [pdf] with a Foreword by Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab. This document summarises the evidence on each of the 45 questions posed in the “Call for Evidence” and sets out the Government response to each one. It is a disappointing document which includes no clear concrete proposals and is, in important respects, wholly inadequate. Continue reading
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Tag: Dominic Raab
As we have seen, Raab claims that the Bill of Rights “helped mould a separation of powers between government, Parliament and the courts – a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of the state from dominating the others or abusing its power”. But as far back as 1976 the Conservative sometime Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, was warning that the parliamentary system could be exploited in such a manner that it could act as an ‘elective dictatorship’. Continue reading
Raab’s view of the Bill of Rights 1689 is, if anything, even more rose-tinted than his misty-eyed evocation of Magna Carta. According to him, the Bill “built on earlier rights. Fair trial safeguards were added, strengthening the independence of the jury selection from bias, and requiring the prior conviction of a criminal offence before the imposition of fines or the forfeiture of property”. He also points out that it added to Article 20 of Magna Carta “a ban on the infliction of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’”, which he sees as “an early precursor to the modern ban on torture”. Continue reading
Raab expanded considerably on the sentiments expressed above in the first chapter of his book The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights (2009). When this was published, Raab took the opportunity openly to state that “I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights”, and many of the Act’s defenders regard the Bill of Rights Bill that he has recently introduced as the culmination of a twelve-year campaign to rip up our current human rights protections. Continue reading
According to Peter Hitchens in the Mail, 22 June 2022: “There’s no such thing as human rights … They are an invention, made out of pure wind. If you are seriously interested in staying free, you should not rely on these flatulent, vague phrases to help you. They are in fact a weapon in the hands of those who wish to remove your liberty and transform society”. Continue reading
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