YLAL’s response to the Independent Human Rights Act Review

On 3 March 2021, YLAL submitted its response to the Independent Human Rights Act Review (‘IHRAR’). 

To help inform its submission, YLAL hosted a virtual roundtable on 27 January 2021 featuring a range of junior human rights practitioners and policy professionals, and also sought input from its broad membership base.

As the response sets out, YLAL’s view is that the Human Rights Act 1998 “generally strikes a fair balance between the rights of the individual and duties on the State… there is no evidence to suggest that the reform envisaged in the IHRAR’s terms of reference and call for evidence is either necessary or desirable. As such, YLAL’s position is reform of the HRA should not be a priority for the Government. Instead, the Government should focus resources on addressing the crisis in the justice system which has arisen from sustained underfunding by successive governments.”

You can read the response here. 

We’re really grateful to YLAL committee members Ollie Persey, Crash Wigley, Becky Kingi, Tara Mulcair, Sam Coe and Aneela Samrai for their work on this. Thank you all!