Human Rights Act - Update

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Human Rights Act - Update

This is a link to today's Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,376973,00.html

In which Lord Hope, (Scotland's senior judge before his appointment as a law lord) explains why it is wrong to assume that because few Human Rights Act challenges have succeeded in Scotland, few would be successful in England.

Regards,

-- Tony Hayter (Tony@Hayter.com), October 04, 2000

Answers

I've just read this and it's very useful. Something else in the Guardian's web archive of interest is the fact that because of the Human Rights Act, everybody is now entitled to have an Ombudsman hear their case in front of a tribunal. The advantage of this is that you get to make sure that the evidence you want to be heard is heard, and you get to hear and challenge the other side's version of events. Up until the HRA was introduced on the 4th Oct, the different Ombudsmen who work for the Financial Ombudsman Service (Banking Ombudsman, etc) tried to keep tribunal cases to a minimum, so that cases could be dealt with 'quickly, easily and fairly informally' (i.e. cheaply). Personally I would much rather go to a formal tribunal than take pot luck with the present system of ombudsman's-assistant's-judgement-by-post. NB This info is contained in an article is by Nessa MacErlean called 'Justice fiinally breaks the wedlock deadlock'. Eleanor Scott.

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), October 04, 2000.

This highlights something we should bear in mind about the Human Rights Act and that is that it only applies to problems you have with the authorities, not lenders directly.

However, it still looks likely to be useful if you find your court, judge, tribunal, FSA, etc seem to crumbling at the thought that a lender could have done any wrong.

What we don't yet know is how it will apply to bodies The Banking Ombudsman, The Building Society Ombudsman, Cifas, Registry Trust, etc.

Any thoughts anyone?

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), October 05, 2000.


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