THE government has confirmed plans to launch a major overhaul of human rights law in Britain despite warnings the move would have dire consequences for the rights of citizens. 

The pledge to introduce a new Bill of rights, likely to involve scrapping Britain’s Human Rights Act, was announced in the Queen’s Speech today. 

It came after more than 50 groups, including Amnesty, Liberty and the British Institute of Human Rights, warned Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday that repealing the Act would “undermine the global system of rights and protections.”

Responding to the Queen’s Speech today, Amnesty UK chief Sacha Deshmukh condemned what he described as the “systematic gutting” of key protections for people in Britain. 

“Scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a narrower, meaner Bill of rights will make it even harder for ordinary people to challenge mistreatment at the hands of the state,” he warned.

“Relatives of the Covid bereaved, women challenging serious failures to investigate and prosecute rape, activists fighting for abortion services in Northern Ireland: all these rely on the Human Rights Act.”

The Runnymede Trust warned the overhaul will undermine the rights of black and ethnic minority people in Britain, and pledged to fight plans to repeal the Act. 

The Queen’s Speech argued that the Bill of rights will “end the abuse of the human rights framework and restore some common sense to our justice system.”

But Liberty director Martha Spurrier has described the proposals as a “blatant, unashamed power grab” by the government. “They are quite literally rewriting the rules in their favour so they become untouchable.”

Proposals in the Bill include measures to make it easier to deport people with criminal convictions who claim the right to a family life in order to stay in Britain.