In the Queen's Speech on Wednesday, the government's expected to announce plans to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a new British Bill of Rights
The current act's been criticised by the Conservatives for reducing Britain's power to deport foreign nationals.
The European Court of Human Rights, the judicial arm of the Council of Europe, has been blamed for the decade-long legal battle to deport Abu Qatada.
But supporters of the Act say that removing the universality of human rights would have dangerous consequences.
"If you suddenly say 'Ok ...no Human Rights Act', what's left? And in terms of the enforcement; of the kind of rights that the convention refers to, you then have to say, so who's going to adjudicate that? What kind of appeal is there going to be and how is that going to work...?" said Mike Ovey, principal, Oakhill Theological College
It's not clear what it'll mean for the rest of Europe and our fellow European citizens, and it's certainly not clear, whether in fact it's going to remove protection from a British citizen that they would otherwise have under the Human Rights Act, it depends an awful lot on what they bring in to replace it," he told Premier's News Hour.
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Article by Desmond Busteed
Desmond Busteed is a multimedia journalist for Premier.
