Pledge to combat ‘cancel culture’ in human rights shake-up

A MAJOR shake-up of human rights laws will combat socalled cancel culture and set out protection for free speech, the Justice Secretary said yesterday.

Brandon Lewis made the pledge amid concern that unelected judges were developing European-style privacy laws by the back door.

He said: ‘We need to ensure we have a system of human rights that doesn’t create or give cover for cancel culture. We need to do everything we can to protect freedom of speech, even when it can be really, really annoying.

‘We can’t allow people to claim their human rights are being infringed because they disagree with us.

‘I fundamentally agree in people’s right to offend.’

He added that allowing free speech and debate to be restricted would leave society ‘trapped in one person’s world view, which is very, very dangerous’.

A Bill of Rights to replace Labour’s Human Rights Act was published by Boris Johnson’s government this year –

‘Protect freedom of speech’

but it has gone back to the drawing board to ensure it combats the issue of Channel migrants being trafficked from France in small boats.

Mr Lewis told a fringe event set up by the Policy Exchange thinktank at the Conservative Party conference yesterday that he and Home Secretary Suella Braverman were working on reforming human rights laws to boost deportations.

He added: ‘This Government is determined to make sure we are dealing with the issues around illegal immigration.’

Mr Lewis indicated that the previous Bill of Rights plans were likely to be broken down into smaller packages to get them through Parliament, adding: ‘We’ll probably do it in different pieces of legislation.’

It is understood a separate package will set out how decisions by UK courts supersede rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and that Parliament has supreme authority in law-making.

‘We do need to be clear that Parliament is sovereign and if Parliament has expressed a view through legislation then the courts have always kept to that view when implementing the law that has been passed,’ he said. His remarks came after Mrs Braverman said she would reform the Modern Slavery Act, which has allowed Channel migrants to delay deportation by claiming they had been exploited.

‘There have been huge attempts to try to stop the problem and I feel we are at a stage now where we need to take dramatic action,’

Mrs Braverman told The Sun. ‘The problem has gone out of control for a variety of reasons.

‘A majority of people coming here from Albania – some 80 per cent – who are coming across on small boats are claiming to be victims of modern slavery... regardless of the fact that they may have paid tens of thousands of pounds for the privilege of being a so-called modern slave.

‘That’s also regardless of the fact that they will have actively sought to come to the UK through an illegal, illicit and dangerous method. So it’s being abused.’ She indicated she would raise the evidence threshold for slavery claims and introduce time limits.

She also said some police forces had been ‘captured’ by woke groups and tended ‘to pander to political correctness... and a lack of courage to adopt old-school policing’. She added: ‘I want to encourage police to get back to investigating every burglary, making sure antisocial behaviour, car theft, drugs, graffiti, vandalism is jumped on instantly.’

‘Adopt old-school policing’