Family law and the government’s proposed review of the Human Rights Act 1998

Professor Chris Barton A Vice-President of the Family Mediators Association Academic Door Tenant Regent Chambers Stoke-on-Trent

Under the heading ‘Protect our Democracy’ the 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto Get Brexit Done Unleash Britain’s Potential promised ‘We will update the Human Rights Act’.

Following  a ‘Call for Evidence’ an ‘Independent Human Rights Act  Review’ (‘IRHRA’) was submitted to Government which then issued its 'Plan to reform the Human Rights Act’ which ‘will restore a common-sense approach in vital areas’ and eg allow ‘more scope to decide how we interpret rulings from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg’. A response period to the ensuing Consultation Document ('CD') ran from 14/12/21 to 8/3/22.

This article considers the 580 pp IRHRA including some of the organisational responses to it together with the 117 pp of the CD. It notes the discouraging attitude to change evinced by family/child law interest groups such as the Family Law Bar Association the British Association of Social Workers and the Child Poverty Action Group and disapproves of the slighting of such as a...