UK Law Articles
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The Times
September 26 2000
'The Act gives us values in a Godless age'
AS SHE counts down to Monday, Francesca Klug admits that there is a "pinch-me" feeling about the Human Rights Act. After more than a decade of working towards its creation, Klug is like a mother whose first child is starting school. "I have an anxiety that some well-intentioned lawyers won't fully understand that it is a purposive piece of legislation like nothing else we have ever had," she says.
For the first time, judges and magistrates will be looking at the purpose and intention of legislation rather than its strict technical meaning.
Klug is among a handful of people who can claim to be one of the Act's architects. She worked with ministers and officials for two years behind the scenes on the final form of the Act, has been a key figure on the Government's human rights task force, overseeing implementation, and this month will launch the Human Rights Act Research Unit (she is director) at King's College London, where she is also a Research Fellow in law.
It will not be a free-for-all with lawyers bringing absurd claims, schools forced to abandon uniforms or being challenged for disciplining a child. Judges have been trained and will hold the line against such challenges. Nonetheless, there will be new rights in some areas.
Klug says: "The Act will fill gaps, such as in the area of privacy. The Act will impose positive obligations, so individuals and public authorities will have to approach decisions in a certain way. They must look at upholding rights, rather than as now, looking at what the law prohibits - and then seeing what we are free to do, what is left when all those prohibitions are in place. If people feel their positive rights have been breached, they can bring a claim. So it is an empowering measure - people will have more leverage and public bodies will be more accountable."
Judges will have to apply the law differently. They will still develop the common law but within a set of ethical standards laid down by Parliament. "And what is very different is that they are no longer bound by precedent," says Klug. "The Convention is a living instrument and the oldest authority on something is not necessarily any longer the best." Courts will be strongly influenced by Strasbourg case law but they are not bound by it, she emphasises.
She sets out the story of the Act in Values for a Godless Age. The book's title is the clue to her philosophy. "We live in a diverse culture, where people constantly lament the loss of common values . . . the idea of a Queen representing one religion, for instance, is irrelevant to many people. They even look to a programme like Big Brother to find something that will connect them."
The Act will fill that gap, she believes, creating a framework
for common values to which everyone can sign up. "Without sounding too
pious, I hope this will be its most enduring legacy."
