Have rights in the UK been eroded in recent years?

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Welcome to another podcast from the Politics Shed. In this episode, I will give an overview of human rights and civil rights in the UK, and consider the following question. Have civil liberties and human rights been eroded in recent years?

The phrase, in recent years, is somewhat ambiguous, but generally refers to a period from the late 20th century. This is when people in the UK began to lose confidence in the popular assertion that they lived in a free country. The old belief that the British were fairly unique in the degree of freedom they enjoyed was founded on the principles of the rule of law, an independent judiciary, an ancient parliament, and a well-established, if not always perfect, democracy, as it had come to be by the mid-20th century. The British contrasted themselves happily with the ID-carrying continentals who might at any time be required to show their papers by an armed police officer or member of the military. However, this sense of satisfaction began to be challenged, particularly during the 1980s when rights increasingly entered political discourse as an area of concern. So for the purposes of this question, I will look at why this has happened and the ongoing debate about rights in the UK. But first I'll examine some of the structural problems with rights protection in the UK and the constitutional landscape before the 1980s. It is often observed that unlike the USA and the vast majority of countries in the world, the UK lacks a codified constitution. However, while the UK does not have a codified constitution, it has a constitution, just one that is not codified, into a single document. Instead, it exists in several locations. This means there are no higher laws or principles of government or rights that require

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special procedures for amendment. The highest source of law in this country is statute law or acts of parliament. This is the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, meaning parliament has the authority to change any law at any time for any reason. Parliamentary sovereignty refers therefore to the absolute and unlimited legal authority of parliament.

reflected in its ability to make, amend or repeal any laws it wishes. In contrast, the situation in America or the United States is different, where constitutional laws take precedence over congressional statutes. Congressional statutes, laws made by Congress, are subordinate to constitutional laws, and any changes to the Constitution require a complex procedure.

There have, therefore, only ever been 27 formal amendments to the US Constitution, and 10 of these were added almost immediately and are referred to as the Bill of Rights.

In the UK, if Parliament wishes to amend core constitutional laws, it can do so through the same process as any other piece of legislation. It is no more difficult to change the Constitution than to regulate the quality of cheese, or to require the safe disposal of refrigerators. An incoming Parliament and Government could, therefore, through ordinary legislative processes, eliminate some of rights we currently possess.

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So this is an odd paradox. The UK is generally regarded as a place where rights are respected. But without an entrenched constitution, the foundations of rights in this country are relatively insecure.

Entrenched means difficult to change or amend. Most codified constitutions are accompanied by a complex and difficult amendment procedure, which makes it difficult for governments to change the rules to suit themselves. One could argue that the absence of a codified constitution renders the foundation of rights in this country relatively weak and vulnerable to alteration by an incoming parliament and a powerful government. However, the advantages of an uncodified constitution mean that in times of emergency it is relatively easy for British governments to increase executive power and curtail rights. For example, in the Second World War elections were suspended and powers were given to direct employment and arrest people of German descent. During the pandemic the government was easily able to enforce lockdown rules. The belief that Britain is a country where rights are generally respected is founded on a long history of rights protection in the UK. And parliament has historically been proactive in securing the rights of British citizens, dating all the way back to the Magna Carta of the year 1215. This document, famously a treaty between the barons and King John, signed on an island in the Thames at Runnymede, was enacted as an act of parliament in 1297. It did not immediately give us trial by jury, although when jury trial did evolve, it came to be regarded as based on the Charter's guarantee of trial by one's peers. It did not offer sweeping statements about personal freedoms or human rights or fair trials, and in fact,

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For the most part, it did not establish general rights, but rather created or recognised privileges. However, interpretations of the Magna Carta were exported to the United States and other English-speaking countries over several centuries. The Magna Carta is therefore said to be the basis of habeas corpus and the principle of due process, which asserts that no one should be arrested or detained without a process to ensure the legality of the arrest. And most significantly, it can be seen as the beginnings of the rule of law principle, that no one is above the law.

Other significant acts of Parliament that have protected individual rights include the Habeas-Corpus Act of 1679, the Bill of Rights of 1688, which emerged from the civil war between the Crown and Parliament. The British Bill of Rights differs from the American counterpart as it is primarily concerned with the rights of Parliament rather than those of British citizens. But both the American Bill of Rights and British Bill of Rights placed limits on the power of the state in the name of rights. The Bill of Rights of 1688 guarantees the right to bear arms, a fact that many Brits are unaware of. While the Second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees Americans the right to bear arms, Article 7 of the British Bill of Rights of 1688 similarly guarantees this right for British citizens.

However,This right depends on being Protestant and adhering to other laws that might criminalise the act of bearing arms. As a result, this provision is redundant, as it asserts that you have the right to bear arms, assuming that no laws are enacted to negate that right. This is another example of the principle of the sovereignty of Parliament, that Parliament cannot bind its successors, which means all subsequent acts override.

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past acts. So subsequently, Parliament has banned all handguns in the UK after the Dunblane massacre. In the 1960s and 70s, changing public attitudes led to the 1965 Race Relations Act. This was the first legislation in the UK to address racial discrimination.

Though it was criticised because it only covered discrimination in specified public places, the Act laid the foundations for more effective legislation. It also set up the Race Relations Board to consider complaints under the Act itself. The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act made sex discrimination illegal in the areas of employment, education and the provision of goods, facilities and services.

The 1976 Race Relations Act was established to prevent racial discrimination. It made race discrimination unlawful in employment, training, housing, education, and the provision of goods, facilities, and services. The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalised sexual activity between men. Sexual Offences Amendment Act of 2000 reduced the age of consent for homosexual men from 18 to 16, to match straight and lesbian sexual activities. The Marriage Same Sex Act of 2013 was passed on the 17th of July that year. Same sex marriage was made lawful in England and Wales. In addition to domestic statutory law, various international or supranational sources of law follow from international law such as the European Convention on Human Rights, which remain in place even after Brexit, since they form no part of the EU. So the mid 20th century saw a range of statute laws enacted by parliament to extend human rights to gender and race across the UK. In the UK, common law also plays a significant role in protecting rights.

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In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, judges have the authority to develop rules of law through their judgments. Scotland operates under a civil law jurisdiction. In Scottish common law, the range of legal sources is broader. While judicial decisions and statutes are important, Roman law has historically been a more significant source of authority in Scotland, especially in areas like contract law, property law and obligations. Judges in Scotland are more inclined to draw from academic writings and legal treaties. Scottish judges also focus on underlying principles behind legal rules rather than strictly adhering to prior case law. Common law relies on the principle of stare decisis, or let the decision stand, which means case law forms a body of past cases and set precedents which in turn guide new cases where statute law does not exist or leaves room for interpretation. Therefore, in common law jurisdictions, judges can create rights through their rulings, and they have done so in various significant ways. Famous cases such as Donahue v. Stevenson, which established consumer rights, illustrate this. Donahue v. Stevenson replaced the principle of buyer beware with an expectation that consumers were protected by a contract  implied by the act of purchase, and to expect that goods should not harm them. When, as in this case, judges have no statute, law, or precedent to guide them, they rely on common law principles, such as due process, transparency, and fairness, which have themselves been developed by centuries of legal practice and form part of the overall principle of the rule of law. The rule of law along with judicial independence and judicial neutrality are principles of UK law which have also been developed again over centuries and are seen as a significant protection for individual liberties. Indeed, until the late 20th century, they would have been widely regarded as sufficient protection. Briefly then, the rule of law comprises of the principles of equality before the law, equal access to the law,

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and due process. Judicial independence is the principle that judges and courts should be free of external interference, such as threats and bribes. And judicial neutrality is the principle that the judiciary, i.e. the judges, should apply the law free from bias and prejudice. Generally speaking, again, through much of its history, and certainly in the early part and the middle part of the 20th century, the UK and its citizens would have felt themselves to have adhered reasonably well to these principles. However, as explained earlier, by the late 20th century these historic protections, these principles of the rule of law and common law and the history of statute law were seen as insufficient.

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Liberals and the left saw the Thatcher era as an attack on rights. The miners' strike saw the deployment of police in formations resembling a paramilitary force, rather than in the spirit of community policing. Britain's unarmed police force, the policemen on the beat, the friendly neighbourhood policemen, seem to be challenged by this new, harsher reality.

New laws were introduced in the 80s to restrict the actions of unions and restrictions on free speech in response to the IRA, such as the ban on reporting the words of Sinn Fein, the political party that represented the republican movement. Although the end of jury trials and internment in Northern Ireland predated the Thatcher government, it foreshadowed the way security and terrorism would become the justification for greater restrictions on civil rights. In 1987, the book Spycatcher was banned in the UK and became a symbol of the attack on cherished freedoms. However, long before this doubt set in, inequities of class and gender were already apparent and identified by writers such as J.A.G. Griffiths in his book, The Politics of the Judiciary, an elderly white male judiciary drawn from a narrow social class educated in public schools and Oxbridge were seen out of touch and indeed plenty of evidence to show biases reflecting their decisions in cases of gender and race. Notwithstanding that, notwithstanding that again the rule of law was seen to be generally well applied based primarily on the professionalism and expertise of the judiciary. However, these concerns, along with the increasingly authoritarian methods of the Thatcher era, resulted in 1997 with a Labour government that was elected on a programme of constitutional reforms which in part were motivated by a perceived attack on civil rights and the frailty of legal protections. The centrepiece of which

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would be the Human Rights Act, but would also include the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act, along with a wide range of constitutional changes, including devolution. The Blair government passed the Human Rights Act in 1998, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British court processes. The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 continued this trend, of extending rights and enshrining them in statute law. This also continued another trend of writing down more elements of the constitution into statute law. Britain's unwritten constitution has been shrinking as more and more constitutional elements are defined in statute law. Recent changes such as the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act and Equality Act and the creation of a Supreme Court has led to the suggestion that there is now a rights-based culture in

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The creation of the Supreme Court and the reform of the judicial appointments process strengthened the independence and status of the judiciary, as well as doing something to increase its diversity. And certainly there's been an increase in the number of judges drawn from ethnic minorities and women. While the new Labour project, after 1997, to strengthen rights protection, concerns that rights were being eroded were increased by the impact of 9-11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the subsequent war on terror. Heightened concerns over national security have been one of the most significant changes in recent years. This has resulted in a series of new policies aimed at protecting British citizens. These policies have included existing restrictions on the activity of terrorist suspects, initially implemented to address the Northern Irish problem or terrorism or the troubles in Northern Ireland as they were all described in the 1980s and 90s as well as new legislation that allows the government to control the movements, activities and even internet use of individuals. There are a number of case studies which show that after 9-11 and 2001, recent decades have seen increased powers to the police and a potential eroding of civil rights. One of these case studies worth examining is that of the Belmarsh prisoners. Following the 9-11 attack in New York and Washington DC, the Home Office identified several foreign-born terrorist suspects posing a threat to British citizens and arrested and imprisoned them in Belmarsh High Security Prison without a formal trial which, according to existing human rights norms, violated due process. This led to a court case which reached the highest court of the land, which until 2009 and the establishment of the UK Supreme Court was the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The court considered the case, known as A and Others vs the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

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The Secretary of State for the Home Department is the official title of the Home Secretary, meaning the Home Secretary was being sued for imprisoning these men in Belmarsh Prison without trial. The court utilized the Human Rights Act to declare that their detention without trial was illegal. This relatively new provision in the law enacted in 1998 and effective from 2000 was applied to assert that the individuals were imprisoned unlawfully by the British government. The judges did not rule that their imprisonment was illegal based on a breach of due process and the right to a fair trial. Instead, their rationale was that it was discriminatory. The judge's concern was not that these individuals had been deprived of their liberty, but rather that they were foreign-born and no similar procedures existed for domestic terrorist suspects.

So the common law principles of fairness and equality before the law guided the application of the Human Rights Act. This also constituted an act of discrimination, violating Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which applied through the Human Rights Act. This case demonstrates how British courts can utilize the powers of judicial review to declare a government action illegal, a power which was enhanced by the passage of the Human Rights Act. However, since the courts have no authority to declare an act of parliament unconstitutional, the government was able to amend the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2005 to imprison all of these men in their homes under control orders. The ease with which a government was able to change the law, particularly if it holds a majority in the House of Commons,

could be seen as more evidence of the UK's elective dictatorship, which is a phrase coined by Lord Halesham in the 1970s to illustrate the dominance of Parliament and the possible theoretical results of a Parliament controlled by a disciplined party with a large majority.

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Another useful case study which illustrates how the government can get its way after being blocked by the Supreme Court is that of the case of Abu Qatada. The government identified Qatada as a threat by virtue of his radical preaching and since he was a Jordanian national wished to deport him on the 12th of November 2012 the UK

Special Immigration Appeals Commission upheld Abu Qatada's appeal against deportation and released him, subject to a control order. The Home Secretary, Theresa May at the time, said the government would appeal against the decision. The courts continued to prevent his deportation on the grounds that his human rights, under the Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights, would be violated if he were sent to a country that routinely obtained evidence through the use of torture. However, he was subsequently deported to Jordan on the 7th of July, 2013, after the UK and Jordanian governments agreed to ratify a treaty satisfying the need for clarification that evidence potentially gained through torture would not be used against him in his forthcoming trial in Jordan.

The Qatada case is therefore evidence of the courts and the Human Rights Act operating to safeguard rights, and evidence of the government's ability to successfully manoeuvre around such safeguards. It was, of course, argued that this was also evidence of the courts acting to undermine human rights since they were protecting a potential threat to the safety of other citizens. This, as we shall see  is a perennial dilemma in the debate on rights and civil rights. Security is a right for all citizens to feel safe. And yet liberty may well be a right for all citizens to move through the world unchecked and unlimited by government unnecessary interference.

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Blair government was not only influenced by the effects and aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United States and the war on terror as it was called, it also famously came to office having coined a phrase, a vote-winning phrase of some success. Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. This neatly indicated their new identity as new labor, since being tough on crime was traditionally a conservative position. In practice, this reflected a continued public perception that crime was on the increase. There have been increased political and popular concerns since the 1980s and into the 1990s and to today regarding the need for a tougher approach to criminality, which is contrary to the steady decline in crime rates over this period. As the amount of recorded crime has declined,

So the public's perception of the threat of crime has generally persisted or increased. So the new labour period after 1997 continued the trend in the UK of building more prisons and locking up more people and has meant the UK has a far larger prison population than most European nations. Numerous legislative measures have been introduced to address the issue of crime, resulting in the creation of thousands of new offences over the past few decades. Some of the more controversial measures included Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, or ASBOs, which allowed the police to impose control orders on individuals, restricting their access to certain areas of town, based on a civil rather than criminal burden of proof. ASBOs, first introduced in 1999, could therefore impose a range of restrictions on usually young offenders, often based on hearsay evidence and in the absence of a jury. ASBOs were however abolished in 2015, being seen as largely ineffective and often as a status symbol for those who received them. In 2025, the government proposed new respect orders called ASBOs for adults

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which would give the police and local councils powers to ban persistent offenders from town centres or from drinking in public. The perception that low-level anti-social behaviour remains a problem and is indeed a growing problem has returned in these new ASBO forms. Fear of crime then, real or imagined, has meant the public has been remarkably willing to sacrifice some liberties.

Another useful case study which illustrates this is the need to show a photo ID when voting, passport or driving licence. With almost no voter fraud in the UK, the need for photo ID responded to a non-existent problem and may have deterred some people from voting. However, it did respond to the prevailing climate of insecurity. The Blair government

also considered, and indeed for a while it looked like they would enact, universal ID schemes in which an ID might be imposed on the population, rather like the papers that continentals so often were said to show to the police. The government eventually dropped the ID scheme. Expert advice asserted that it would have little impact on crime or security and was widely unpopular. So for the last few decades

The fear of crime and concerns over security have tended to place safety of society above the protection of individual rights. Early release schemes are unpopular and attacked in the media, and governments generally fear being seen as soft on crime. Judges who prevent the deportation of illegal immigrants can be described in the popular media as enemies of the people. And indeed, the judiciary has been widely attacked.

popular media, particularly the tabloid newspapers, as being somehow preventing governments from doing that which they have to do in keeping us safe. The trend, therefore, has been for recent statute law that increases the power of the police and alters legal processes in order to facilitate prosecutions. For example, in 2013, the Justice and Security Act introduced

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closed material practices, which permitted terrorist suspects and major criminals to be tried without the evidence against them being disclosed in full. The passage of the Investigatory Powers Act in 2016, referred to at the time as the Snoopers Charter, increased the power of the intelligence agencies by obliging internet companies to store information about customers.

browsing history. The Counter Terrorism and Sentencing Act of 2021 gave the police new powers to impose T-PIMs, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures. A T-PIM imposed strict limits on an individual's freedom and they were first introduced in 2011 and strengthened in 2016 by extending the period they could be imposed from two years to an unlimited time. The 2016 amendment also meant that TPIMs could be imposed on the balance of probability, rather like ASBOs. However, between 2011 and December 2020, there have only been 24 individuals served with a TPIM, notice. And as of 30th November 2021, there were four individuals on a TPIM.

In 2025, the government introduced State Threats Prevention and Investigation Measures, or STPIMs, which will provide a suite of restrictive measures that can be used where the government deems it necessary to prevent individuals further involvement in state threats activity where prosecution is not possible. In effect, this means a kind of ASBO or T-PIM aimed at individuals working for Russia or China or perceived to be working for Russia or China. A series of laws in recent years has led to the criminalization of some forms of protest. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022, the Public Orders Act of 2023, the Serious Disruption Regulations Act of also 2023 have introduced new

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and expanded use of stop and search powers for the police. Orders that ban people from participating in protests and control their movements and activity and associations. And new offenses, such as being prepared for locking on or preparing to chain oneself to something. So an individual found with chains and padlocks and perceived to be on their way to a protest can be arrested. In 2025, the Crime and Policing Bill, if passed, will make it an offence to hide one's identity at a protest, i.e. wearing a mask or any other face covering, carrying or using fireworks, and climbing on a war memorial will also be a criminal offence.

In June 2025, the Court of Appeal upheld a judicial review brought by the group Liberty against the Home Office in May 2024. The Court of Appeal agreed that the Public Order Act's wording of Serious Public Disorder, Serious Damage to Property, Serious Disruption to Life in the Community, is intended to set the threshold for police intervention relatively high. That means that the meaning of the word serious here could not be reasonably changed to more than minor by the Home Secretary. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman had used statutory instruments, so-called Henry VIII powers, a type of legislation with minimal parliamentary scrutiny, to extend the powers of Public Order Act to minor offences. There are a number of case studies which neatly illustrate the effect of these changes

to the ability of people to engage in protest. In 2023, five climate activists from the Just Stop Oil protest group were each jailed for at least four years over a conspiracy to block London's M25 motorway, marking the longest sentences ever imposed for nonviolent protest in Britain. In 2025, six female supporters of the activist group

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Youth Demand were arrested at a Quaker meeting house in London on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. The police said the arrests had come amid concerns about plans to shut down London using tactics such as roadblocks, etc. Youth Demand described how 30 officers had been used to make the arrests of the six female activists. The group began carrying out acts of civil disobedience in 2024.

Its demands for the government include stopping all trade with Israel, raising money from attacks on the super-rich and from fossil fuel elite to pay damages for the effects of fossil fuel burning. Paul Parker of Quakers in Britain said he could not recall anyone being arrested at a Quaker meeting house in living memory. Quakerism is almost 400 years old and the faith's values include simplicity, truth, equality and above all peace.

The case of Brian Haw. Brian Haw initiated a peaceful protest in Parliament Square against the war in Afghanistan. continued his opposition to the war in Iraq. Haw remained a fixture in Parliament Square where he camped and lived day and night, loudly protesting and occasionally being joined by crowds large and small. His noisy protest

was legal at the time he began. In court, during Haw v. the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the government argued that its law, which banned such protests, applied retrospectively. This was an interesting departure. From common law precedent, which established the idea that laws were generally not applied retrospectively, initially the judges upheld the government's position. Although Haw was ultimately able to continue his protest in Parliament Square with restrictions such as being not quite so noisy, it remains illegal for anyone else to conduct a protest in Parliament Square or indeed anywhere else if it is unauthorized. The case of Shamima Begum, a case that illustrates the way politics can push governments to put security before human rights,

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is the case of Shamima Begum. In 2015, Shamima Begum, then aged 15, travelled to Syria with two other girls so she could join the Islamic State. In 2019, the then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, removed her British citizenship on the grounds that she was a threat to national security. In 2020,

Court of Appeal judged that Ms Begum be allowed to return to the UK so that she could appeal the judgment. The Home Secretary responded that if this was allowed it would create significant national security risks. When the case went to the Supreme Court the then Lord President Lord Reid found in favour of the Home Secretary. According to Lord Reid the Court of Appeal was wrong when it stated that when an individual's right to have a fair hearing came into conflict with the requirements of national security, her right to a fair hearing must prevail. Instead, he stated, that the right to a fair hearing did not trump all other considerations, such as the safety of the public. Even though it is clear that Begum had been trafficked for sexual exploitation as a child, her citizenship and her status as a child were not considered human rights. She remains trapped and confined in a prison camp in northern Iraq.

Case study. Palestine Action. In June 2025, a protest group called Palestine Action broke into RAF Briesnorton, the largest station of the Royal Air Force in Oxfordshire, and sprayed to military planes with red paint, resulting in millions of pounds of criminal damage, according to police. Palestine Action describes itself as a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms industry in the United Kingdom with direct action. It says it is committed to ending global participation in Israel's genocidal and apartheid regime. In response,

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the government introduced a draft order to amend the Terrorism Act 2000, which passed through the House of Commons by 385 votes to just 26. It prescribed the campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under anti-terrorism laws, putting the group on a par with armed groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This may be the first non-violent direct...

action group that has been prescribed as terrorist in modern times. In effect, this means it is a criminal act punishable up to 14 years in prison to show support by word or deed for the group. This came in the context of Israel's attack on Gaza and Hamas, which was declared by the International Criminal Court as a plausible risk of genocide. Why might the UK government have taken such

harsh action against Palestine action by using counter-terrorism laws to stop protests which might in the past have been compared with the suffragettes or the Greenham common women in the 1980s, i.e. criminal damage, vandalism rather than terrorism. Critics point to a government anxious to appeal to the attitudes of the Trump administration. Others to a Labour Party stung in the past

by accusations of anti-Semitism are now overreacting. Or are government also anxious to appear even-handed after harsh penalties meted out to anti-immigration rioters? But the broader context is the ongoing fear of disorder which has become the backdrop to public policy and public discourse in the UK. Calls to sack directors of the BBC or journalists

when they allowed a broadcast from the Glastonbury Festival of the pop singer or rapper Bob Villain chanting Death to the IDF. The crowd joined in. Newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express called this terrorism. The climate of fear and the fight against terrorism have also led to data protection concerns, particularly regarding the collection of personal information.

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by the government in the fight against terrorism and criminality. The PREVENT program is a nationwide initiative aimed at preventing the radicalization of young people. It requires teachers, doctors, social workers and others to monitor and report people they consider vulnerable to extremism. In 2024, the Home Office published its latest PREVENT referral figures. Responding to the figures, Pre-Crime Program Manager

at the Open Rights Group, Sarah Chitzeko, said,

and immigration services, with potentially devastating consequences’, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, DRIPA, of 2015, the so-called Snoopers Charter, which in its original form would have allowed the government to collect extensive data on individuals to pursue prosecutions against potential criminals and terror suspects, was limited by the courts. Unable To prevent its passage through Parliament, human rights groups decided to challenge it in court. The case was Secretary of State for the Home Department vs Watson and Davis, with Theresa May serving as Home Secretary at the time. The lawsuit lasted several years, ultimately resulting in the Court of Appeal ruling in 2018 that surveillance data could only be retained for serious crimes.

The court also mandated that access to this data must be approved by a court requiring a warrant, similar to what the police would need to search a home. In October 2020, the government introduced the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Criminal Conduct Bill, which would permit, in certain circumstances authorising security, intelligence and police agencies to participate

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in criminal conduct during their operations. It was also referred to as the Spy Cops Bill, a reference to the UK undercover policing relationship scandal where undercover police officers had engaged in long-term relationships with unsuspecting women. It's clear therefore that the threat of terrorism and changing attitudes to crime and disorder have resulted in a form of defensive democracy, where governments have extended the powers and scope of the law to restrict civil liberties. However, when assessing the question of whether civil liberties and human rights have been eroded in recent years, it's also important to consider the establishment of new rights and processes, particularly the Human Rights Act of 1998, which was designed to protect against a perceived attack on civil rights and civil liberties in the 1980s. The Human Rights Act was part of a series of constitutional reforms initiated by the Blair government at the turn of 21st century. These reforms included changes to the House of Lords, the evolution to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Freedom of Information Act, the Disability Rights Act, and various other measures, and enhancing constitutional protections. The Human Rights Act domesticated the procedures for applying the European Convention on Human Rights. Britain has been a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights since the 1950s, allowing British citizens to contest their rights at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg since 1966. However, the Human Rights Act, which came into force in 2000, enabled citizens to seek enforcement of those rights in domestic courts

without having to go to Strasbourg. A process that may have taken eight or ten years became immediately available in the courts across the UK. There have been numerous cases since where domestic courts have enforced these rights and a significant increase in the use of judicial review cases based upon these rights leading to the suggestion that the judiciary in the UK has become more activist. This

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activist judiciary may be one of the consequences of the Human Rights Act. Along with the Human Rights Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Equality Act brought together earlier pieces of legislation that had sought to outlaw discrimination and unfair treatment, such as the 1970 Equal Pay Act, the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, and the 1976 Race Relations Act. It identified nine protected characteristics, age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. It made it illegal for public bodies, employers, service providers or others or other organisations and individuals to discriminate against people on any of these grounds. In the workplace, or wider society. The passage of the Equality Act in 2010 by the Coalition may therefore be further evidence of a rights-based culture in the UK. The Human Rights Act gave the courts enhanced powers that allowed them to review the legality of government decisions and parliamentary legislation. This was a significant shift in the constitutional relationship between the judicial

and the legislative branches. While the courts possessed these powers, common law concepts such as ultra-vires, the Human Rights Act provided them with more explicit form. Sections 3 and 4 of the Human Rights Act outlined these powers. Section 3 mandates that the judiciary interpret the laws of the land in conjunction with the European Convention on Human Rights as far as possible. This means that courts may need to interpret language in a way that adds or removes words to ensure compatibility. Section 4 states that if such an interpretation would significantly alter the law, the courts must issue a declaration of incompatibility, prompting Parliament to address the issue. This can be compared to the United States, where the Supreme Court can declare an Act of Congress unconstitutional.

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effectively ending the matter. Congress must then start anew if it wishes to proceed. In the UK, the best the courts can do under the Human Rights Act is declare incompatibility merely indicating that they believe a law conflicts with the European Convention on Human Rights. Parliament retains the power to disregard this declaration, which is not the case in the USA or any country with a code of The Human Rights Act has significant limits. instance, legal standing refers to who has the right to bring a claim in court. Under the Human Rights Act, one must be a victim to file a which can be narrowly interpreted. Moreover, claimants must appeal within six months of the event in question. Lastly, legal costs can be prohibitive. Legal aid for judicial review cases where courts assess government decisions has been restricted in recent years, making it difficult for individuals to seek justice if they believe their civil liberties or human rights have been compromised. These restrictions on cost and time mean even accessing the Human Rights Act can be a difficult process for ordinary citizens. While this historic subordinate position of the judiciary in relation to Parliament remains, this does not mean that Human Rights Act was less than a significant strengthening of rights protections. Alongside the Human Rights Act, the creation of the Supreme Court and the reform of the judicial appointments process strengthened the independence and status of the judiciary. Parliament has acted to amend laws following declarations of incompatibility. There is no legal obligation for to do so. Some important cases.

illustrate what Section 3 and 4 can achieve. Regarding Section 3, notable case is Gaidan vs. Godin Mendoza. In this instance, a man who had been living with his partner, both of whom were gay, sought to inherit the tenancy of their shared home after his partner's death. Existing law require that individuals be living as if husband and wife, to qualify for inheritance.

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The courts interpreted this provision to mean any loving relationship, regardless of sexual orientation, thus aligning it with the European Convention on Anti-Discrimination Rules. This interpretation was not considered strained, as the legislation stated that individuals must be living together, as if husband and wife, which did not necessitate a heterosexual relationship.

For Section 4, a notable case is Bellinger v. Bellinger involving an individual who had undergone gender reassignment surgery and sought legal recognition of their new gender. At the time, British statute law did not permit gender changes. The courts deemed it too complex to grant recognition under existing law and issued a declaration of incompatibility, inviting Parliament to rectify the situation. Parliament subsequently enacted the Gender Recognition Act. These two cases illustrate the distinction between Section 3, where courts can interpret laws without significantly altering them, and Section 4, where they recognise the need for legislative action. However, Parliament is under no obligation to address these declarations.

These procedural protections for human rights introduced by the Human Rights Act are relatively weak by international standards, since Parliament retains the right to ignore judicial rulings and can overturn judges' if it chooses. For example, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a blanket prohibition on prisoner voting unlawfully restricted their right to vote. This was followed two years later

by a declaration of incompatibility from the inner house of the Court of Session. These rulings were ignored by successive administrations until the law was finally changed. Hostility to the Human Rights Act has continued, as has the threat to repeal it. The Conservative Party's manifesto for the December 2019 general election promised that if elected, the Conservatives would re-examine

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relationship between government, parliament, and the courts, with particular focus on judicial review and the Human Rights Act. The Judicial Review and Courts Act of 2022, which received royal assent in April 2022, aimed to balance the powers of government, parliament and the courts and resulted in a fall in judicial review cases, which have been declining steadily since reforms enacted the Cameron government in 2015. In the first quarter of 2022 there were 550 judicial review cases, 9 % down on the first quarter of 2021 and 40 % fewer than in the first quarter of 2019. In this sense, the government has been acting to restrict what they see as an increasingly activist judiciary and the use

by pressure groups of judicial review as a means of slowing or frustrating government actions.

The plan to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights did not happen, but it remains a Conservative and Reform Party policy and is on consideration by the Conservatives now in 2025, but they are in opposition. In recent decades, membership of the EU also resulted in an extension of rights protections in the UK. Many rights which formed part of EU law also remained after Brexit. Some EU law has been carried over into the UK after Brexit, so there will be continuity in the many areas of UK law originally based on EU law. These retained EU laws were essentially a snapshot of EU law as it applied to the UK on the 31st of December 2020, which was simply cut and pasted into UK domestic law.

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EU law became UK law in areas which related to former EU obligations, such as the UK's working time regulations, which implemented the EU's working time directive, the EU's general data protection regulation, and other rights and principles in EU law that had direct effect in the UK, like the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of nationality, which is a right provided in the treaty on the functioning of EU. So many rights, which came about as membership of the EU, have remained in place even after Brexit. So overall, what is the conclusion to the question, have civil liberties and human rights been eroded in recent years? One way of thinking about this might be to distinguish between human rights and civil rights. Human rights tend to refer to those rights we think of as being universal and part of being human, rather than just being British. Civil rights are often associated with citizenship and participation in civil society. They overlap and some civil rights have come to be seen as human rights. The right to vote is one of these. In recent years, human rights have expanded into areas of gender and identity, making the removal of protections from racial discrimination or gender equality unthinkable. In June 2025, the terminally ill Adults End of Life Bill passed the House of Commons, reflecting a historic shift in attitudes to assisted death. A dignified death has now entered the sphere of human rights. So human rights

continued to expand and extend and be redefined to cover more areas of human activity. However, the fear of crime and the fear of terrorism continues to impose demands on governments to prioritize security over civil rights. As a result, police powers and surveillance powers have certainly increased. It is, also perfectly possible to argue that balancing the rights of citizens

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to expect security and safety with the rights to liberty has been successfully navigated since governments and courts continue to be criticised for both being soft on crime and a threat to liberty. An interesting postscript to this debate is the recent adoption by the new right of an enthusiasm for the protection of human rights. On 14 February 2025,

Vice President JD Vance scolded an audience of European leaders at the Munich Security Conference for censoring conservative and right-wing views, which he said had shut people out of the democratic process. The UK was singled out for criticism for alleged restrictions on free speech. The right has raised concerns over wokeism, deplatforming and cancel culture.

which they argue restricts freedom of speech in the name of the right not to be offended. In June 2025, the British government saw the need to bolster the protection of free speech in the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, which proposed fines for universities failing to uphold freedom of speech, which was passed under the previous Conservative government and became part of UK statute law under the Labour government.

You can decide whose rights are being restricted and whose rights are being protected here. Thank you for listening to this overview of rights, civil liberties in the United Kingdom in recent years.

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You can find much of what I've talked about today on the Politics Shed website.