Compliance in the UK in the ‘age of subsidiarity’

This chapter focuses on the United Kingdom’s long—and, of late, troubled—relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights system and its compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It also refers to arrangements for compliance with the UK’s obligations in respect of United Nations human rights treaty bodies. Section 2 outlines the history of the UK’s relationship with the European Convention system and the incorporation of most Convention rights and freedoms into domestic law by means of the Human Rights Act 1998. Section 3 discusses the paradox presented by, on the one hand, the intense controversy surrounding human rights in the UK and, on the other hand, its relatively strong record of implementing judgments of the Strasbourg Court. As discussed at section 4, this record of success is partly due to the robust institutional arrangements that exist to ensure compliance with supranational human rights rulings at the level of the executive, Parliament and the judiciary—arrangements that exemplify the primary responsibility on states to secure the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. Yet this record is not unblemished: section 5 discusses the contrasting responses to two Strasbourg judgments—on prisoner voting rights and on the retention of biometric data—to illustrate the political character of the implementation process. Section 6 examines the role of civil society. Section 7 concludes.