A watershed moment will take place today in the House of Lords.

Peers will, in effect, vote on whether to shrink human rights protection in the UK. This is because the government wants to discard the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as part of its Brexit legislation. They insist that it must not be part of UK law post-Brexit, even though other EU law is to be retained.

At the moment, it doesn’t matter who you are, whether you are an individual or a business, an asylum seeker or an EU national from outside the UK: if EU law is engaged, the Charter applies. If the Lords vote to ditch the Charter, it will mean that on Brexit day, 29 March 2019, the level of human rights protection in the UK will be significantly diminished.

While the government seeks to argue that the protections enshrined in the Charter already exist in British law or will be incorporated through other EU directives, there is really no coherent argument for scrapping it. The government’s decision seems ideological; a rejection of the concept of human rights.

It doesn’t matter that EU law is designed to be interpreted through the lens of the Charter and is therefore incomplete without it. Nor does it matter that it is precisely at times of transition that we need human rights the most. Most shockingly, the government is prepared to sacrifice the rights of people who have no other meaningful source of protection than the Charter. Chief amongst these are members of the LGBT community. Read more via Independent