Recommendation 32

The focus of any assessment of damages in a human rights claim should be the need to provide the victim with an effective remedy. Requiring the courts to give “great weight” to the importance of minimising the effect an award of damages might have on a public authority’s ability to perform its functions distracts from this focus, prioritising instead the interests of the body responsible for the human rights violation. We recommend that clause 18(6) is removed from the Bill. The existing obligation to take into account the principles applied by the ECtHR in relation to the award of compensation should be reinstated (see Annex, Amendments 14 and 15).