Human rights and access to justice

We campaign for a strengthening – not the denigration – of our human rights protections.

In depth

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is an agreement between countries that they will uphold the fundamental rights and freedoms of their citizens and the people in their territory. These include the rights to life, to a fair trial, to freedom of expression, and to freedom from torture. They also include freedom of religion or belief, which has guaranteed vital protections in law for humanists. The ECHR is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where individuals from the UK can appeal when they believe their rights have been violated, and they have exhausted all other legal avenues at home.

Since 1998, the Human Rights Act (HRA) has brought the rights and freedoms of the ECHR into UK law. This means that individuals can defend their rights directly in UK courts, and public authorities must act in ways that respect those rights, without needing to take a costly and time-consuming case to Strasbourg. The European Court, however, remains an essential safety net for the UK public to protect their rights, should they need it.

We are alarmed that these vital human rights frameworks are being undermined in the UK. After years of speculation about replacing the HRA with the sub-par ‘Bill of Rights Bill’, in 2024 we welcomed the Government’s commitment to the Human Rights Act and remaining party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

However, in 2025 Reform UK leader Nigel Farage tried to introduce a private member’s bill (PMB) to withdraw from the ECHR, after he announced that his party would withdraw from the ECHR as well as several international human rights agreements if Reform wins the next election. Fortunately, the PMB was voted down by MPs. Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch also committed to withdrawing from the ECHR and Labour has called into question how Article 3 (prohibition of torture) and Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) are interpreted in relation to asylum cases. Such moves risk setting a dangerous precedent and weakening international human rights protections more broadly.

Why we need the ECHR

Human rights are the minimum standard by which we can be expected to live, and protect citizens against an overbearing state. They are not privileges. Over the years, people in the UK have used the Strasbourg court to challenge injustices and inequalities. Cases have led to the end of the ban on gay people serving in the armed forces and to prevent teachers from hitting children. The Convention has been used to protect victims of domestic violence and of child abuse. In short, the ECHR has helped shape a fairer society that humanists strive for.

We have to ask: what would happen to ordinary people if those protections were removed by the very people in power we are supposed to be protected from?

What the human rights law frameworks mean to humanists

The HRA is a vital tool for humanists in securing our rights. Section 6 of the HRA imposes duties on all public authorities to uphold human rights, while section 3 empowers courts and public bodies to (where feasible) ‘read in’ extra words to legislation and policy to make sure that it is human rights-compliant. That includes reading humanim/humanists into laws that refer to religions/religious people – such as RE and marriage laws.

Section 6 has therefore had a normative impact on society without invoking the powers bestowed on the courts. Indeed, the mindset behind section 3 has arguably permeated governmental and local decision-makers and engendered a fundamental respect for human rights at all levels of decision-making. For example, when the Welsh Government announced in 2019 its intention to amend the law on religious education to explicitly include non-religious worldviews, putting them on an equal footing with major religions, it explicitly stated that this change was made to take into account the effect of the HRA.

The HRA has paved the way for legal recognition of humanist marriages in Scotland and Northern Ireland, for teaching about humanism alongside religions in schools in England and Wales, and to address unequal provision of care and support for non-religious patients across the UK. Its repeal would present a significant setback for secularism in the UK, as in many cases it would leave non-religious people without a legal mechanism to challenge discriminatory treatment or government bias in favour of religions.

Strengthening our human rights protections

Human rights should be strengthened, not weakened. There are many ways in which we wish to see the UK’s current human rights settlement strengthened:

• The HRA applies to ‘public authorities’, but if a public service is contracted out to a religious group then the Act does not necessarily apply to that group. We want to see the meaning of ‘public authorities’ expanded to include any organisation receiving public funds to deliver a public service.
• The UK is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), but the Convention is not directly applicable to UK law, in the same way the ECHR is through the Human Rights Act. We think that children’s rights are not strong enough in domestic legislation, so wish to see that changed: we want the UK Parliament to pass a Children’s Rights Act that transposes the UNCRC into UK law, as has been done in Scotland.
• We also support proposals for a Northern Ireland ‘Bill of Rights’ to supplement the UK Human Rights Act 1998, taking into account the particular rights-based issues faced in Northern Ireland.

What we’re doing

In 2020, the then-Conservative UK Government launched an attempt to roll back access to judicial review. In response we brought together more than 250 human rights-focused organisations and more than ten individual human rights experts to launch a coalition to oppose any attempt by the UK Government to restrict access to human rights laws, calling for the protection of judicial review. Signatories to the statement include Amnesty International UK, Greenpeace, RNIB, Samaritans, Save the Children, Shelter and the Refugee Council. Together, we stated:

‘While every system could be improved, and protecting rights and freedoms for all is a balancing act, our Human Rights Act is a proportionate and well-drafted protection for the fundamental liberties and responsibilities of everyone in this country.

‘The Act guarantees the rights to free speech and expression, to life, to liberty, to security, to privacy, to assembly, and to freedom of religion or belief. It prohibits torture and guarantees fair trials and the rule of law.

‘Judicial review is an indispensable mechanism for individuals to assert those rights and freedoms against the power of the state.’

This statement built upon an earlier letter we coordinated with help from Index on Censorship, which appeared in The Telegraph, calling on the Government to uphold freedom and justice and protect these vital mechanisms.

We work closely with other civil society organisations, such as the British Institute of Human Rights and Liberty, to defend the HRA, and we are the only religion or belief organisation that is a full member of Equally Ours, the national coalition of groups interested in equality.

We champion the ECHR and HRA, and all they have helped us achieve.

We challenge the ongoing erosion of the human rights frameworks, condemning the Conservative and Reform commitments to withdraw the ECHR if they win the next election as dangerous and divisive, and opposing Nigel Farage’s attempt to table a Bill that would do the same.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

Previous government’s attempt to roll back rights

• As well as launching our own coalition, we were part of the British Institute of Human Rights’ Human Rights Alliance, which sought to ensure that the previous government’s proposals for a ‘British Bill of Rights’ would not weaken our human rights settlement.
• In 2020, we warned the Independent Review of Administrative Law (IRAL) that reforms to judicial review risked undermining citizens’ fundamental rights and constitutional protections. In its review, the IRAL cautioned against radical reforms and concluded that Ministers should be confident ‘the courts will respect institutional boundaries in exercising their inherent powers to review the legality of government action’, and recommended that ‘politicians should, in turn, afford the judiciary the respect which it is undoubtedly due when it exercises these powers’.
• In 2021, we defended the operation of the HRA in response to a consultation by the Government-established Independent Human Rights Act Review (IHRAR) and warned against proposals to weaken the HRA in response to a call for evidence by the Joint Committee on Human Rights into the Government’s Independent Human Rights Act Review. When the IHRAR panel published its report in 2021, it recommended only minimal change to the HRA.
• Contrary to the recommendations of the reviews, the Government published proposals to ‘reform and replace the Human Rights Act’ with a British Bill of Rights. In 2022, Humanists UK warned the Ministry of Justice that the proposal ‘would be counterproductive and seriously risk undermining human rights protections for non-religious people’.
• In 2022, the Government announced its intention to bring forward legislation to reform the HRA in the Queen’s Speech and published a British Bill of Rights. Dubbed the ‘Rights Removal Bill’, it would have created extra admissibility criteria for ordinary people seeking justice, and weakened links with the European Court of Human Rights. This would have likely led to more claimants needing to seek redress in the Strasbourg court rather than at home in domestic courts – with potentially prohibitive costs and delays – all reducing the power of UK citizens to hold government to account. The controversial Bill was shelved when Liz Truss became Prime Minister, resurrected under Rishi Sunak, but then reportedly deprioritised. In 2023, the Government finally confirmed that the Bill was scrapped for good.
• However, in 2023 provisions in the Illegal Migration Act set a dangerous precedent by disapplying the HRA from certain groups of people, undermining the very principle of the universality of rights. And the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 asserted that Rwanda was a ‘safe country’ to which asylum seekers could be deported. As well as condemning the Rwanda Act as dehumanising and immoral, we particularly raised the alarm for non-religious asylum seekers and religious minorities, who could not be safe due to Rwanda’s blasphemy laws.
• We welcomed the new Labour Government’s decision to use the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to scrap the Rwanda scheme and to repeal many of the concerning provisions within the Illegal Migration Act.

Wider campaigning

• In 2024 we submitted 20 recommendations, along with Humanist Society Scotland, to the UN Human Rights Committee to address religious discrimination across the UK in its review of the country’s human rights record. Our joint submission raised concerns about discrimination against the non-religious in education, in the criminal justice system and in hate crime law, and made recommendations on how the UK and devolved Parliaments can better uphold the right to freedom of religion or belief for all. LGBT+ Humanists submitted evidence on conversion practices following an informal briefing where the Committee requested further details on the current status of a conversion therapy ban in the UK. We welcomed the Committee’s Concluding Observations which called on the UK to prohibit conversion practices, raising specific concerns about religious conversion practices in Northern Ireland.
• In 2023 we responded to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) Statutory Review, providing evidence of discrimination against the non-religious in areas of education, work, living standards, health, justice, participation in public life, and marriage law, as well as highlighting child abuse in illegal schools.