MARTIN HOWE Q.C.
This is my personal home page. For
information about my professional activities as a barrister, please
refer to the website at my Chambers:
www.8newsquare.co.uk
Current activities
- Working to deliver a clean Brexit, under which the whole
United
Kingdom regains full control of our laws, borders, money and
international trade, and which fully delivers what 17.4 million people
voted
for in the Referendum. I am Chairman of Lawyers for
Britain
which was founded to campaign for a Leave vote in the Referendum.
Afterwards it continued developing and promoting legal solutions for a
Brexit which restores our sovereignty, and does not leave us
enmeshed as a vassal state or colony of the EU with no vote but still
controlled by them. We provided much of the intellectual firepower
leading to the rejection of Theresa May's deeply flawed deal, and its
replacement by Boris Johnson's much improved arrangements. Now we are
90% towards restoring the UK's sovereignty, but with work still to do
in replacing the Northern Ireland Protocol and ending the remaining
areas of ECJ jurisdiction under the Withdrawal Agreement. For
details of my activities please see the Lawyers for
Britain website, my articles
for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph (may need subscription to
access) and on Conservative
Home, and my Brexit
Central author pages.
- Suporting reform of human rights law
through the scrapping of the Human Rights Act 1998, its replacement by
a new Bill of Rights which will reaffirm our historic rights and
liberties
and incorporate the rights safeguarded by the European Convention of
Human Rights
into
UK law, but will de-couple its interpretation from the judgments of the
European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg.
Unfortunately in the 70 years since the Convention was drafted, the
Strasbourg Court has gone far beyond
its job of interpreting the Convention and has created new judge-made
doctrines which do not exist in the actual
wording of the Convention itself. I have long supported these reforms
which will come again to the front of political debate once the
immediate Brexit issues are behind us.
I worked on reform of human rights laws as member of the Coalition
Government's Commission
on a Bill of Rights for the UK, which reported
with a majority favouring a UK Bill of
Rights.
I was previously a member of the Conservative Party's Commission to
create a Bill of Rights (and Responsibilities) for the United Kingdom,
which was established after David Cameron's speech of 26 June 2006, "Balancing
freedom and security - A modern British Bill of
Rights".
I have spoken on many occasions in support of replacing
the
Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights. At The Times/Matrix
Chambers Debate,
speaking in favour of the motion were David Davis MP, myself and Andy
Hayman, former head of Counter-Terrorism at Scotland Yard. We were
opposed by Cherie Booth QC, Rabinder Singh QC and Shami Chakrabarti. I
spoke at a debate
organised by the Institute of
Ideas (Podcast.)

- I chaired the
Courts and Sentencing Policy Group of the Centre for Social Justice
and launched
our group's report
with Iain Duncan Smith MP.
This major report,
"Order
in the Courts: restoring faith through local justice"
criticised the then Labour Government's over-centralisation of the
criminal
justice system and its torrent of legislation, and called for a much
more locally accountable system of justice in which offenders can be
dealt with more effectively.
(See Executive
Summary of the Report).
Political publications
For a selection of my publications on political and
constitutional issues, see Publications.
Recent publications are on the subjects of regaining our sovereignty
and ending the remaining vestiges of EU control over our laws and
European Court jusisdiction, how to safeguard our civil liberties
through a new Bill of Rights for the United Kingdom, and I have written
extensively on human rights and
terrorism, and
criminal justice and sentencing.
Legal Publications
Please click here for a
selection of my legal publications, articles and lectures.