Responding to human rights judgments 2014-16: MoJ report published
The Ministry of Justice has published a report setting out the government's position on the implementation of human rights judgments from the domestic courts (declarations of incompatibility under the Human Rights Act 1998) and the European Court of Human Rights for the last two years. It also sets out briefly the wider developments in the area of human rights.
It is divided into three main sections:
- general introductory comments, including wider developments in human rights and the process for implementation of adverse judgments;
- the UK's record on the implementation of judgments of the ECtHR and an overview of significant ECtHR judgments that either have become final since the last report or became final earlier but are still under the supervision of the Committee of Ministers; and
- information about declarations of incompatibility in domestic cases.
In 2014 and 2015 there were respectively 14 and 13 judgments in the European Court of Human Rights involving the UK. In each year there were four findings of violations by the UK.
Since the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force on 2 October 2000 until the end of July 2016, 34 declarations of incompatibility have been made. Of these:
- 22 have become final (in whole or in part) and are not subject to further appeal;
- 4 are or may be subject to appeal; and
- 8 have been overturned on appeal.
The only outstanding declaration of incompatibility in respect to a family judgment relates to Z (A Child) (No 2) [2016] EWHC 1191 (Fam). In that case a declaration was made by the court that section 54(1) and (2) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 are incompatible with the rights of the applicant and his child under Article 14 of the ECHR (taken with Article 8) insofar as they prevent the applicant, as a single parent, from obtaining a parental order following a surrogacy arrangement (contrasted with adoption where single people are able to adopt). The report states that the Government intends to address the incompatibility through a remedial order.
The report can be accessed here.
18/11/16