What is the Human Rights Act consultation?

The Human Rights Act is an invisible safety net for all of us, working to ensure our rights are respected.

The UK government has recently launched a consultation on proposals to replace the Human Rights Act. In its consultation document, the government says its aim is to ‘update’ the act. But, in reality, these proposals would gut it. 

The government want to replace the Human Rights Act with a ‘Bill of Rights’ that would dramatically weaken our ability to hold the government and authorities to account and to defend ourselves when the state violates our rights.

The Human Rights Act works well to protect people when their rights are violated. We don’t need to change it.

Please respond to the consultation here, to show the government that people across the UK want to save our Human Rights Act.  To support you, we have provided guidance below and as a PDF here. The consultation closes on 8 March, so please ensure you submit your response before then.

Have your say in the consultation

We have provided a handy guide to support your response to each question. We hope these will help you to formulate your comments, but please adapt and add to them: make your views and ideas count.

We have selected 14 key questions, out of the 29 posed, that we believe are most important to answer. Feel free to answer more or fewer.

For each question, we provide a summary of our response and bullet points that give reasons for our position. Below these, we provide additional explanation and the occasional background note. 

How to take part in the consultation

1. Firstly, save our how-to guide and open it on your computer.
    
2. Then open the consultation page in your browser in another window.

   You’ll find links to seven sections with questions you can answer and two sections that simply give information.
    

3. Answer the key questions in the consultation.

   Some of the questions refer to detailed proposals in the consultation document.

   You don’t have to answer all the questions.

4. To save your answers and return to the form later, you will need to enter an email address in the ‘About you’ section.
    
5. When you have finished filling in your answers, click the ‘Finish’ button in the bottom right corner.
    
6. You can choose to give your email address to receive a copy of your responses.
    
7. Then press the ‘Submit Response’ button.

The consultation closes on 8 March, so remember - you have until 8 March to submit your answers.