Media hostility and political indifference have contributed to the sharp decline in the use of human rights arguments in court, human rights group Justice said this week.


Figures released by legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell showed that the number of cases citing the Human Rights Act 1998 had fallen by half since its peak in 2002 - although lawyers were now applying the ?legislation to more areas.



Only 357 cases reported by the publisher involved human rights issues last year, the research revealed, compared with 661 in 2000, a year after the act's introduction, and 703 in 2002.



However, the act is now being used in a broader spectrum of cases including property, environment, finance and employment.



Justice director Roger Smith told the Gazette that tabloid newspapers had a material interest in denigrating the act. He said: 'They are afraid the act's right of privacy provisions could stop them running the intrusive stories which make so much money. And so in discrediting the act, they may have discouraged lawyers and their clients from using its arguments in court.' He added that Labour had been 'feeble in the act's defence, while the Tories ran it down because it wasn't their own legislation'.



Stephen Grosz, head of public law and human rights at London firm Bindman & Partners, said the drop in the number of cases arose because 'the higher courts have resolved a considerable body of issues in the relatively short life of the act'.



Jonathan Rayner