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The repeal of the HRA was a central part of the Conservative manifesto, and Gove, who got the Academies Bill before Parliament within weeks, will want to do the same here. The HRA has become unpopular because it has been used at the edges by effective Human Rights lawyers in our profession and of course the Bar.

However the underlying value within the ECHR (which was drafted by British lawyers just after WW2 to try and prevent the horrors that ended just 70 years ago) was that human rights are universal. They apply to the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, and across borders. That is what "universal" means.

Once you go down the route of repatriating Human Rights, which is at the heart of the Tory philosophy herein, you are on the road that leads to such home-grown banners for humanity as the Fundamental Law of the State in Belarus, or the Constitution of North Korea.

That is the point that needs to be got over to people and the Law Society needs to act now, to lobby MPs, to name and shame those who refuse to back the rule of law, and to erode the thin majority in parliament that 38% of the voters have given the current Government.

In addition work needs to be done to work with the Law Societies of Scotland and Northern Ireland. It would be wholly wrong for the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales to lose their legal rights on the whim of a Government almost completely unrepresented there. That is a principle that needs to be applied to the EU referendum as well.

No time can be wasted. This is urgent.

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