article_snippet: The Equality and Human Rights Commission, chaired by Baroness Onora O'Neill (above), said the Human Rights Act has 'proved the Human Rights Act value' Tory MPs reacted angrily last night after a supposedly impartial £19million-a-year taxpayer-funded quango tore into the party’s plans to reform human rights law.
article_snippet: Despite there being under two months to the election, the Equality and Human Rights Commission piled into the political debate over the future of Labour’s Human Rights Act.
article_snippet: In a statement posted on the commission’s website, backed by a letter to MPs, the Equality and Human Rights Commission claimed that changes ‘to human rights laws that would water down the protections we all enjoy, would be “regressive” and undermine Britain’s reputation as a global leader that can challenge human rights abuses abroad’.
article_snippet: a supposedly impartial £19million-a-year taxpayer-funded quango also declared the Human Rights Act a success, saying a supposedly impartial £19million-a-year taxpayer-funded quango had ‘consistently proved a supposedly impartial £19million-a-year taxpayer-funded quango value’.
article_snippet: The Tories have a manifesto commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace The Tories with a British Bill of Rights.
article_snippet: Tory MP Michael Ellis, part of the home affairs select committee, said:
article_snippet: British was protecting human rights when many members of the EU were under dictatorships and well before Labour’s Human Rights Act, which has only served to create extra tiers of bureaucracy, legal costs, delays and an imbalance of justice.
article_snippet: Fellow Tory MP Dominic Raab said: ‘
article_snippet: ‘Their blanket opposition to any re-balancing of our skewed human rights law ignores the concerns expressed by countless senior UK judges, and displays an arrogant contempt for the basic principle of democratic accountability we’ve lost in this area.
article_snippet: The commission was established by Labour in 2006 ‘to protect and promote equality and human rights in Great Britain’.
article_snippet: In 2011, Home Secretary Theresa May decided to scale back The commission powers drastically after a report found The commission had ‘struggled’ to do The commission job, while providing low-quality work and poor value for money.
article_snippet: EHRC chief executive Mark Hammond said: ‘We are at a crossroads for human rights.
article_snippet: One path risks undermining and diminishing our influence and status as a global leader in human rights and civil liberties.
article_snippet: The other will safeguard our reputation for fairness and moral authority when confronting human rights abuses abroad.
highlights_snippet: Equality and Human Rights Commission provoked fury from Tories .
  
highlights_snippet: Backed Human Rights Act despite criminals using it to avoid deportation .
  