Human rights battling with a woman's rights

With less than two months to go to implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998, it is hard to tell what has garnered more column inches - hysterical predictions as to what legal lunacy might be perpetrated in its name, or whether the prime minister's wife, Cherie Booth QC, should be doing her best to extol its virtues as part of modernising Britain.

Such is the growing level of interest in the Act that an article she wrote in The Daily Telegraph (7 August) was flagged up by the lead news story.

The Times suggested she had entered 'enemy territory', while acknowledging that her motivation was probably sound (9 August).

But it did worry whether the article may have been tampered with by Labour spin doctors: 'At least I hope it was somebody in No 10 and not Ms Booth herself, for beginning naturally to adopt the strangulated language of new Labour could play havoc with a perfectly decent career at the Bar.' It wound up by warning: 'Traversing murky waters can (as the Macbeths discovered) develop a momentum of its own: you step in so deep that it can be difficult to turn back.'

The Guardian described the Conservative Party's growing attacks on the Act as 'a farrago of tabloid headlines and plain ignorance' (9 August).

'There will be no bonanza for lawyers while legal aid is so tightly laced,' it added.

The Independent condemned Tory spokesman John Bercow's 'Lady Macbeth smear' of Ms Booth as foolhardy, cheap and sexist.

Instead, it celebrated the end of the days of sappy politicians' wives (9 August).

The Daily Mail was the most critical of Ms Booth's actual arguments.

In its leader, it said her article raised as many doubts as it sought to remove, citing disarray in Scotland (which has had the Act for the past year), and the likelihood that she will cash in on an explosion of claims, in spite of her assurance that the courts will be 'sensible' in their interpretation of the Act.

The paper said it feared for parliamentary sovereignty.

Another article described the Act as a 'charter for crackpots'.

A largely sympathetic Sunday Times editorial noted how 'English judges have upheld our basic freedoms rather better than most governments' (6 August).

A London Evening Standard editorial (2 August) feared that 'some legal decisions, while technically justified under the [European Convention on Human Rights], will collide with common sense.

It would be a sad day for British justice if the effect of extending our human rights were to bring the law into disrepute'.

The Sunday Times (6 August), Metro in London (7 August) and other were more than happy to pick up on the Legal Business survey of City lawyers' pay which revealed that Slaughter and May partners Nigel Boardman, Andrew Balfour and Michael Pescod topped the earnings league at the end of the financial year with 1.2 million.

Some solicitors are now 'generating more take-home pay than many company directors', the Sunday Times reported.

The Financial Times and The Times went for the same angle on the Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate's review of more than 100,000 cases (9 August).

They said errors in recording their outcome are preventing proper assessment of lawyers' performance.

The Independent revived New Labour's attack on litist universities, focusing on City firms' preference for graduates from Oxbridge and red brick universities (10 August), backed up by forthcoming research from Nottingham Trent University.

'The effect is that we're creating a legal profession that is white, rich and upper-middle class,' College of Law chief executive Nigel Savage told the paper.

Anne Mizzi