In a response to todays Queen’s Speech the Human Rights Consortium has said that it is extremely concerned that proposals for a British Bill of Rights are still a serious consideration for the UK Government despite the clear indications that such a proposal would mean removing existing protections in the Human Rights Act (HRA) from legislation.

Director of the Human Rights Consortium Kevin Hanratty said, “The Consortium believes that there is a fundamental lack of understanding within the Conservative Government that the Human Rights Act forms a central part of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA).

Work with our members across Northern Ireland has shown that the Human Rights Act has been an important tool for ensuring the protection of many individual rights across our society and its removal would represent a serious deterioration in those standards.

The UK Government should be seeking to use the HRA as bottom floor on which to build upon through progressive mechanisms such as a local Northern Ireland Bill of Rights rather than a version that seeks to diminish and remove rights as seems to be the case with proposals to date.”

The full Consortium Press Release responding to the Queen’s Speech can be downloaded below.