When the powers-that-be, our political elites, start to hand down laws ostensibly aimed at improving the condition or status of the Common Man, it is time to look certain gift horses very forensically in the mouth. The custodians of parliamentary democracy, in Britain and elsewhere, have for centuries refined the nomenclature of statute laws until, by deployment of euphemism, the title proclaims the reverse of the actual effect of the legal text: the most extravagant recent example, in the United States, is the Inflation Reduction Act, whose catastrophic consequences will be felt globally.
When Parliament resumes next month it is due to consider a Bill of Rights, the first such legislation since 1689. Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice minister and current Welsh Secretary, has raised concerns about this measure, warning that the Government’s plans to reform human rights have “sown the seeds of danger”.
