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The UK Justice Secretary said Boris Johnson had given him the task of rewriting the law when he moved him from the Foreign Office in September’s reshuffle. On Sunday, Mr Raab gave fresh details about how he plans to prevent EU interference from Strasbourg in British matters as part of his overhaul of the Human Rights Act.
In an update on those incoming changes, Mr Raab has said soldiers and UK institutions such as the police and health service should not be “dictated to” by judges in Europe.
He also repeated an assertion he made during his conference speech in Manchester about the Act being used by criminals to prevent their deportation.
Speaking to a newspaper, the Cabinet minister, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister, warned that a “serious issue” was developing where foreign criminals were using the Act’s “right to family life” clause to frustrate deportation orders, with it being cited in “somewhere between 100 and 200 cases a year”.
The proposals to shake up the Human Rights Act are likely to be put before MPs in the spring, with changes to the judicial review process possibly to be debated before the month is out.
The plan had initially been to give a second reading to the Judicial Review and Courts Bill on Monday, but the House of Commons is preparing to clear its timetable to make way for tributes to Conservative MP Sir David Amess, who was murdered on Friday.
Mr Raab told the Sunday Telegraph it was “wrong” that judges in Strasbourg ruled on matters relating to British soldiers fighting overseas, telling the newspaper he was studying how to wind in the court’s influence in the UK.
“I don’t think it’s the job of the European Court in Strasburg to be dictating things to, whether it’s the NHS, whether it’s our welfare provision, or whether it’s our police forces,” the Lord Chancellor said.
“We want the Supreme Court to have a last word on interpreting the laws of the land, not the Strasbourg court.”
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Generation Frexit leader, Charles-Henri Gallois, echoed: “The United Kingdom, which took back control with Brexit and is free from the EU, will be able to impose the superiority of its national law on the decisions of the ECHR!
“It is called national and popular sovereignty against the government of judges!”
It comes as tensions between the UK and the EU continue to soar over the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the Northern Ireland protocol.
Brussels last week published a range of proposals aimed at cutting the red tape the protocol has imposed on moving goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
However, the plan did not address a key UK demand – the removal of the oversight function of the ECJ in the operation of the protocol.
UK Brexit Minister Lord Frost has warned that his Government will be prepared to suspend aspects of the protocol – by triggering its Article 16 mechanism – if it cannot reach an agreement with the bloc on changing how it operates.
That has raised the prospect of the EU taking retaliatory action, potentially in the form of further restrictions on trade with the UK.
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