This page highlights the key 2024 manifesto pledges of the key UK political parties that related to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.
The UK General Election will take place on the 4 th of July 2024 across the UK. In the General Election, UK citizens and qualifying members of the commonwealth over the age of 18 will have the opportunity to elect new Members of Parliament (MPs). Some people are excluded from voting in a General Election, such as prisoners and members of the House of Lords. You can find out more about who can vote with our explainer on the Right to Free Elections.
MPs often represent specific political parties; however, some are independent. The election could result in a change of Prime Minister and political party in power. Each party stands on different policies and pledges that they commit to fulfilling should they become the new UK Government. These are laid out in the party manifestos. This explainer will look at what these manifestos say about our Human Rights in the UK.
The Conservative party is currently the party in power in the UK because they had the most MPs elected at the last General Election and so formed the UK Government. They are led by our current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years, since May 2010. They were re-elected in December 2019 and because the maximum term for Parliament in the UK is 5 years they were getting close to the requirement to call a General Election (Parliament would have automatically dissolved in December had this not happened). A General Election the public the chance to decide whether they want them to continue to lead the country, or if they would like another party to lead. You can find out more about General Elections on the UK Parliament website.
There are many different parties and independent candidates running in the General Election, however, polls as of 17 June suggest the following 6 parties are likely to win the most seats. We have taken them in order of predicted number of seats (highest to lowest).
Ahead of the General Election, each party have released a manifesto which sets out, or ‘pledges’ what they would do if they were voted into government. People will then decide which party they want to vote for based on these pledges.
The UK Government is required by Section 3 of the Human Rights Act (HRA) to implement any laws in a way that is compatible with all sixteen of the rights in the HRA as far as possible. Similarly, section 19 of the HRA says that, when presenting new laws to parliament, the Government must consider our human rights so they can make a statement on whether the proposed law respects human rights or not. You can read more about the ECHR and our relationship with it in our explainer.
Human Rights are something we all have in the UK just by being human, and the government has a legal duty to make sure that our human rights are protected, respected, and fulfilled in all their actions, including making and implementing new laws. At BIHR, we believe in the power of the Human Rights Act 1998 to make sure that public authorities are supporting our rights. What political parties set out in their manifestos, gives us an idea of how rights would be protected should that party get into power. It’s therefore really important that we understand this before casting our votes.
In this explainer, we will be looking at the manifesto pledges of 6 UK parties to see what they say about our human rights. There could potentially be countless human rights implications across any or all the policies on each of the manifestos, but this explainer will focus just on the pledges that refer to the Human Rights Act 1998 and ECHR. Any wording in quotation marks is taken directly from party manifestos and has not been altered.
Whilst some of the pledges in the manifestos will apply to England only due to devolution laws, all of the pledges covered in this explainer would apply to the UK as a whole.
The Conservative party is the current party in power in the UK. Despite attempts by the Conservative Government to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 with a Bill of Rights in 2023, and some mention of withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights, their manifesto for the 2024 General Election does not explicitly mention the Human Rights Act 1998, and it only mentions the European Convention of Human Rights once.
In relation to the Rwanda Scheme and their pledge to “stop the boats”, the Conservative manifesto says the following:
“We will run a relentless, continual process of permanently removing illegal migrants to Rwanda with a regular rhythm of flights every month, starting this July, until the boats are stopped. If we are forced to choose between our security and the jurisdiction of a foreign court, including the ECtHR, we will always choose our security.”
This mention of the European Court of Human Rights does not explicitly state what the Conservative party would do with regards to our relationship with the ECtHR. It may suggest that the UK will not follow decisions that the ECtHR makes if they undermine the Conservatives Rwanda policy, however this is unclear.