Sir Keir Starmer said that "the potential" of human rights laws in the UK was "enormous" in a 900-page manual on The Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.
GB News has obtained a copy of Sir Keir Starmer’s 1999 book titled European Human Rights Law: The Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.
The book served as a manual for judges and lawyers on how to interpret human rights laws when they were introduced under Tony Blair’s government back in 1998.
Mr Starmer was a human rights barrister at the time and edited the book.
The book was released in 1999, just two years after Tony Blair swept to power
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In the introduction he wrote: “Above all else, the HRA [Human Rights Act] represents a new way of thinking about law, politics and the relationship between public authorities and individuals.
"Its potential is enormous; its effectiveness depends on the combined willingness of all of us to approach decision-making from a human rights perspective.”
The Government says that it is working on reforming the ECHR to make it harder for illegal migrants to avoid being deported.
However the support from the PM for human rights laws will draw into question his commitment to these reforms.
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The book is 900 pages long
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Last week the now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood criticised the UK’s “maximalist” and “extreme” interpretation of the ECHR, after having suggested at a meeting with the European Court that it was losing public confidence and needed reform.
Speaking to GB News, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “Keir Starmer was a key figure in turning the Human Rights Act and ECHR into the overriding force in British law that it is today.”
“He says he wants to reform human rights laws but he wrote the how-to manual on how to use human rights laws”.
Meanwhile, former Conservative cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “Does anyone think that Starmer models himself on Frankenstein and truly wishes to destroy the monster he created?
"Human rights law is the high point of his belief system, and he will never apostatise.”
In recent months GB News has reported on a number of cases where foreign criminals and illegal migrants have avoided deportation because of the ECHR’s Article 8 - the right to a family life.
Perhaps most notably, this included the Albanian criminal who was allowed to stay in Britain due to his son's dislike of 'foreign' chicken nuggets.
Reform UK has announced its plans to withdraw from the ECHR and suspend the Refugee Convention as a way to implement mass deportations of up to 600,000 people, while the Conservative Party is currently conducting an internal review into whether the party’s official policy will be to leave the Convention too.
GB News approached No10 for comment.