Introduction

The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) incorporated most of the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law. Since it came into force in October 2000, British litigants have been able to pursue their Convention rights through domestic courts. Prior to this, litigants could claim a breach of their Convention rights at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. However, this time-consuming and costly process offered limited protection. As such, since the HRA came into force, it has proven a popular tool for litigants and their counsel to take on public and private sector opponents. The aim of this chapter is to assess whether the HRA has worked to correct indeterminacies in other legislation.

In the words of Lord Hope, quoted earlier, the HRA has established a rule of construction ‘unlike any’ previous rules. Keith Ewing similarly describes the Act as ‘unprecedented’ and as affecting a ‘fundamental re-structuring of our “political constitution”’. A political constitution is one in which the distribution of power in society depends on dayto- day politics, rather than codified principles. The alternative to a political constitution is a legal constitution. The latter is usually promulgated at a critical turning point in a nation's history, and provides if not timeless, then at least durable, principles as to how government works, and to what ends. The HRA was promulgated in the early years of the New Labour government, after 18 years of Conservative government and a period with no major constitutional reform. The late 1990s was not a critical turning point in the nation's history, but it was a time of significant innovation in British constitutionalism.