The Human Rights Act 1998: bringing the Convention home
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Although the UK signed the European Convention on Human Rights early, for a long time it was not part of the UK's own law. If people felt their rights had been broken, they often had to take their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. That cost a lot of money and took a long time.
The Human Rights Act 1998 changed that by making the Convention part of UK law. Since then, the government, public bodies and the courts must all follow the principles of the Convention, and people can rely on these rights directly in UK courts.
When the government proposed the law in 1997, the paper explaining it was called Rights Brought Home: people would no longer need to travel all the way to Strasbourg. The Act was passed in 1998 but only came into force in October 2000; the time in between was used to train judges and public officials.
From old documents, to an international convention, to the UK's own law.The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, opened in 1995. It was designed by the British architect Richard Rogers, who later also designed the Senedd building for the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff.
Photo: Gzen92, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A common mix-up is to think the Convention stopped applying after Brexit. It didn't. The Convention belongs to the Council of Europe, which is a separate organisation from the European Union. The UK left the EU in 2020 but is still a member of the Council of Europe, so the Convention and the Human Rights Act still apply. The two organisations are compared in “The UK and international organisations”.
Quiz
Is the statement below TRUE or FALSE?
The Human Rights Act 1998 made the European Convention on Human Rights part of UK law.
True. To remember: the Convention was signed in 1950 and became part of UK law through the 1998 Act. The government, public bodies and the courts must all follow it.
