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The Human Rights Act and the politicians

Academic lawyers have commented extensively on the judicial interpretation of the Human Rights Act 1998, but the reaction of politicians to it has received less attention. This paper examines the trends in parliamentary attitudes to human rights by analysing Commons and Lords debates on the Human Rights Bill itself, the Terrorism Bill 1999–2000, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill 2001 and the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill 2002. It also considers MPs' response to the Thompson and Venables and Anderson judgments, as well as Conservative attempts to amend the Human Rights Act. Against this background, it argues that the British polity can be characterised as a ‘contestatory democracy’, in which the system of fundamental rights protection is incomplete since it neglects Parliament's vital role in defining the Convention rights.