Over the years there has consistently been debate around the merits of the Human Rights Act 1998. For some it enshrines the basic standards that any self-respecting Western democracy should practice while for others it represents a series of loopholes for criminals and other undesirables to exploit at the expense of the justice system.

That debate has been most rife within the Conservative party. On the one hand the Convention was originally drafted with the help of the Conservative MP Sir David Maxwell Fyfe and is an international organisation that helps to boost Britain’s standing in the world. On the other hand the Human Rights Act was enacted by a Labour government and makes the UK somewhat beholden to Europe.

If that discourse sounds familiar then I am not surprised. For years the question of the EU threatened to tear the Conservative party apart until Brexit cut the Gordian knot. Could an exit from the European Convention on Human Rights solve this other, similar problem for the Tories?

Today the government is a step closer thanks to an independent report into the Human Rights Act and the launch of a consultation into the statute. To be clear the Act (domestic UK law) and the Convention (an international treaty) are two separate things but they are related and changes to the Act could impact obligations under the treaty. In fact this could be seen as a ‘soft’ approach where the UK does not simply exit the Convention but instead attempts to shape its application in this country into something that is much more palatable to Conservative MPs.

Honestly this political manoeuvring is more likely to just create confusion in the law. Greater divergence between the British and European interpretation of human rights will just lead to more cases ending up in Strasbourg and the government using taxpayer money to fight legal cases it knows it will lose. Perhaps this is understood and is part of a long-term strategy whereby frustration with the European Court of Human Rights does ultimately lead to ‘Convexit’ (Rightreat? The name needs workshopping.)

The other issue is the Good Friday Agreement that requires the Convention to be directly enforceable in Northern Ireland courts but the government has already shown a disregard for peace in Northern Ireland during the Brexit negotiations.

In the end any reform is unlikely to be helpful. The Human Rights Act is, in reality, a boring technical piece of legislation and most cases don’t solely rely on Convention rights. The Act has been in force for more than twenty years at this point and extricating human rights from the law will take the sort of time and determination that this government looks to be running out of.