Gove to oversee human rights act’s repeal

The Conservatives’ manifesto commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act is among the issues facing Michael Gove who has been appointed Lord Chancellor and justice secretary.

Former education secretary Gove is expected to oversee the repeal of Act which could result in Britain withdrawing from the European convention on human rights (ECHR).

Introduced in 1998, the Act guarantees human rights in Britain and was introduced as one of the first major reforms of the last Labour government.

Previous attempts to implement human rights reforms had been blocked in the coalition by the Liberal Democrats. The Tory plans would see the Act replaced by a British Bill of Rights, and the ECHR would no longer able to order a change to UK law.

Gove’s new role as justice secretary sees him returning to a top cabinet position after he was demoted from his role as education secretary — a role which saw him regularly clashing with the teaching unions. He famously dubbed the unions and education academics as “the blob”, and unions welcomed his departure in July 2014 from the education department.

At the time, general secretary of the NUT teachers’ union Christine Blower lambasted Gove’s “pursuit of the unnecessary and often unwanted free schools and academies programme, the use of unqualified teachers, the failure to address the school place crisis and endless ill-thought out reforms to examinations and the curriculum”.

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