New Horizons : Incorporating Socio-Economic Rights in a British Bill of Rights

When the Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998, it was taken for granted that the project of bringing rights home simply entailed incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is only now, over a decade later, that attention is being paid to the content of those rights. Re-opening the debate portends both peril and promise. The risk of jeopardising existing hard-won rights jostles with the possibility of opening up new horizons. It is on the latter that this paper focuses. Particularly important is the prominence given to socio-economic rights