If a government believes that it creates a right, then it will also believe that it is entitled to modify that right. This is how we should understand the shameful discussions of recent years over when it might be legally permissible to torture someone, to render someone to another country so he can be tortured, to deport someone to another country knowing that he might be tortured there, and when our courts should accept evidence obtained under torture. Since New Labour believed that it created the right not to be tortured with the Human Rights Act, it also believes that it can modify that right.
The solution is not to create some new "British Bill of Rights", for the problem is not that there is something wrong with the details of the Human Rights Act. The problem was the whole concept that it is for governments to create and modify the right not to be tortured. Thus, the solution is to give up that idea - to abolish the right not to be tortured.
Insofar as it makes any sense to talk of our having "rights" not to be tortured, these are morally or divinely or naturally given. They are not creations of governments, and governments cannot take them away or modify them. As far as a government is concerned, the question is not "Do my citizens have a right not to be tortured?" Rather, it is "Will I allow my citizens to be tortured, and if so, when?" I should not have a government-given right not to be tortured. Instead, I should have freedom from torture which begins as a state of nature and is not eroded by the government permitting anyone to torture me.
