Bentham was correct. There are no fundamental human rights. The concept, said the great utilitarian, is “nonsense on stilts”. It induces tendentiousness, large legal fees, and possibly war.

Last week saw Britain engulfed in a Hallowe’en of human rights. Bishops in cassocks and counsel in wigs were flying in and out of parliament, courts and broadcasting studios like Harry Potters on broomsticks. Afghan hijackers and ranting mullahs had a human right not to be deported. A Nigerian visitor had a human right to a National Health Service heart transplant. A released killer had a human right not to have his parole terms enforced. The dying had a human right to euthanasia and the living a human right to reject a cancer-carrying embryo.

As Bentham said, there are “reasons for wishing there were such things as rights”, but that does not mean that such rights exist. “Hunger is not bread.”

There may be rights under contract, rights tied to obligations, matrimonial rights and rights ordained by statute. There are principles of human dignity and respect that should guide such statutes. We should observe compassion in all things. As the Bible says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But you may read as many tomes on human rights as you like and (with your brain slowly fried) you will find yourself back with nonsense on stilts.

From the moment this government decided to incorporate the European convention on human rights into British law under the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA) there were two racing certainties. One was that the government would be the main offender under the law and the other was that Tony Blair would wish he had never signed it. He has already said he may well “reform” it if it impedes his terrorism legislation.

Liam Byrne, a government minister, admitted last week that the government was seeking a new balance between its own discretion and what was implied by the act. This is despite the act being largely declamatory. It can be overridden by parliament, with judges merely declaring any new law “incompatible” with the HRA. Ministers can go on doing what they like if parliament supplies them with a majority.

The case of the Afghan hijackers is to the point. In 2000 these nine men hijacked a plane full of fellow nationals and flew it to London. They and 50 others on the plane claimed asylum and were allowed to stay since deportation would have meant certain death. This decision was bizarrely reinforced in 2003 and 2004 despite Afghanistan by then having been “liberated” by British and other forces. The hijackers have since been allowed to live rent-free on benefits in London, incurring some £20m in various costs.

Last week Mr Justice Sullivan, a High Court judge, reasserted this decision, not because it was right but because the government’s refusal to fully implement it was wrong. He was scathing of three home secretaries in denying the hijackers proper asylum, including freedom to move about and earn a living. Blair in reply said that the failure to deport was “an abuse of common sense”. But all the case served to do was give human rights a bad name and invite ministers to pass a new law.

Last week Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, called the act “one of the greatest achievements of this Labour government”. He was commenting on what proved a tragically wrong decision by the Parole Board to weaken the terms of release of a dangerous killer who went on to commit another murder.

The board said it was nervous of judicial review if it denied his claimed “human right” to greater freedom under parole. As in many such cases, a quasi-judicial panel’s professional judgment was polluted by outside pressures: a horror of media attack if it let someone out and a horror of the astronomical cost of human rights litigation if it did not do so. The panel may have been using human rights to excuse its incompetence, but such considerations should not have been an issue.

Indeed, Goldsmith’s trumpeting of the HRA is hypocrisy when contrasted with his dismay at the Afghan hijack ruling, his support for military action in Iraq, his acceptance of “asymmetrical” deportation to America and his fight to stop the Diego Garcians from regaining land stolen from them by the British in 1973. To him as to the prime minister, human rights were fine for the manifesto but a pain in the neck in practice.

Penal reformers are now appealing to human rights as a generalised weapon in what should be a more specific battle against bad laws, mostly introduced by Labour home secretaries. Lawyers are exploiting the procedures of asylum boards, parole boards and employment tribunals to assert what amounts to a “human right to disagree” with any adverse decision taken by a minister or his agents.

Rights are cited against sexual harassment, personal offence, noisy neighbours, landscape views and the wheelchair navigation of a spiral staircase. It was said that the 1998 act could not fall foul of ridicule because judges would see that common sense prevailed. They have not done so. A tribunal actually bothered to hear, at public expense, a teacher claiming that a “farting chair” infringed her human right to avoid embarrassment. A silly law is an invitation to silliness.

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden