Home Secretary, Suella Braverman’s speech to the Tory party conference in Manchester

October 2023

Suella Braverman made a speech on the fringe of the Conservative Party conference on 3 October in which she said the Human Rights Act should be renamed the ‘Criminal’s Rights Act’. The speech as a whole – covering areas such as immigration and the threat that Britain will ‘go properly woke’ under Labour – received a standing ovation by a packed auditorium. She said that Britain was ‘enmeshed in a dense of set of rules designed for another era’ and that these rules acted against the interests of the country. The speech was dubbed a ‘red meat address’ by the Daily Mail.

Hostility to the HRA has a long history in the Conservative Party and many of its members would like to see it abolished and for us to come out of the European Convention. Plans to reform the act seem to have been shelved for the moment but may well reappear in the manifesto for the next election.

Commentators have seen the speech, together with one given in Washington on 26 September, as part of her leadership campaign ahead of a possible Conservative defeat and an election for a new party leader. But an attack on the HRA and the reception given to her remarks on this and other topics are of concern. A standing ovation suggests an element of the party still wish to see the legislation abolished. In some ways it is hardly surprising such has been the remorseless denigration of the act and its supposed iniquities by the right wing press. The impression has been firmly planted that the act is a criminal’s charter and enables such people to escape justice. This despite our gaols being crammed full to bursting and news that foreign prisons may have to be rented to house yet more.

People’s rights need protection like never before. We have witnessed example after example of wrong convictions, unarmed people shot by the police, criminal activities by the police themselves and a steady trail of mistrials and overturned convictions that to argue that we need less protection by abolishing our rights is perverse. The positive effects of the act seldom gain a hearing. In the coverage of the Hillsborough disaster for example, that it was the Human Rights Act which enabled families to gain justice scarcely got a mention in reporting by the right wing press.

Miscarriages of justice, police errors and overturned convictions, all weaken the public’s faith in the justice system. It is therefore depressing to see the Home Secretary make these remarks and receive a standing ovation for them. She seems to ignore the fact that terrorists and criminals are only alleged terrorists and alleged criminals until due process has found them guilty (or not) a fact which, as a barrister, she well knows.

Sources: APnews, Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Evening Standard