Reports of the demise of the government’s flagship human rights reform are ‘tittle tattle’, the lord chancellor told parliamentarians today. ’The Bill of Rights Bill is ready to go and we look forward to bringing it forward,’ Raab insisted.

The lord chancellor was given evidence in a two-hour session of parliament’s Joint Human Rights Committee today amid speculation about the measure’s future. Pressed by committee chair Joanna Cherry KC MP on the extent of support for the bill - which had been shelved under Liz Truss’s premiership, Raab said that prime minister Rishi Sunak was ‘committed’ to seeing it through. 

However he could not give a date for the bill’s second reading in the House of Commons. ‘I haven’t been given one yet,’ he conceded. 

Raab declined to answer Cherry’s question on who would take over ‘your baby’ should be be forced to step down over bullying allegations. ’That’s a hypothetical question which I am not going to indulge. The Bill of Rights is a government proposal, not mine.’

Questioned over the relationship between the bill and the prime minister’s promise of legislation aimed at curbing cross-Channel immigration, Raab said there was some cross-ver ’but we want to make sure that the legislation that comes through on small boats is self-standing’. The Bill of Rights on its own would not solve the small-boat issue, he said. 

Legislation coming through in the new year will be ’human rights enhancing’, he said, in that it will ‘stop this appalling trade’. 

Raab also came under fire for the government’s lack of formal response to the independent review of the Human Rights Act chaired by Sir Peter Gross. ’I looked at it very carefully,’ Raab said.

When asked to respond to his predecessor Robert Buckland’s criticism that the Bill of Rights Bill was a ’cure without a problem’, Raab cited the issues of ‘judge made privacy law’ article 8 challenges to deportations, parole and prison separation centres as ’concrete examples of things that need to be addressed.’

 

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