The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is the independent advocate for equality and human rights in Britain, has sets out its plan to preserve the rights in the Human Rights Act and to protect and promote respect for human rights principles. The strategy suggests possible legislative developments, such as a proposed Bill of Rights, as well as generally aiming to create a climate of respect for human rights.

The Commission’s five priorities for human rights are:

• No regression in law from the levels of human rights protection and mechanisms for enforcement under the Human Rights Act and other ratified human rights treaties.
• Widespread awareness and accurate understanding of human rights at all levels of society, including how they can be used by individuals and applied by public, private and voluntary organisations.
• Human rights mainstreamed into the work of at least five of the most significant regulators, inspectorates and complaints handling bodies.
• To have developed a credible and widely utilised measurement framework for human rights widely and to have reported against this framework in our Triennial Review.
• To have clearly influenced the concluding observations of the Treaty Monitoring Bodies for the UN Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concerning Britain’s performance on respecting, protecting and promoting human rights. 

The EHRC wants to improve ways of measuring the performance of government and public authorities on human rights and work to strengthen the degree of accountability of the UK Government to the United Nations in relation to torture, race discrimination and disability rights. In a survey undertaken earlier this year by the EHRC, where over 2,800 people were canvassed, they found that 80% of people want better human rights protection stated in the law.