The Conservative Party is to set up a commission to review the Human Rights Act, shadow home secretary David Davis announced yesterday.

The Act has given rise to too many spurious rights and fuelled a compensation culture that was out of all sense of proportion, he said.

Announcing the commission during a Press conference in central London, Mr Davis said members would be announced in October and report back before the next General Election.

In an article in the Spectator magazine last week, Mr Davis said billions of pounds that could be spent on hospitals and schools were being wasted on compensation claims.

The commission will consider all the options including repealing the Act, as well as reforming or replacing it, said Mr Davis.

He said: "Clearly, we need to act to correct a seriously malfunctioning Act of Parliament.

"I am not opposed to human rights. Real human rights are worth fighting for. But the Human Rights Act has spawned too many spurious rights. It has fuelled a compensation culture out of all proportion. And all too often, it seems to give criminals more rights than the victims of crime"

The review will propose any necessary alterations to UK law to guarantee individual liberties, while protecting people from crime and terrorism, said Mr Davis.

It will also seek to stop the escalating level of rights claims against public bodies and focus on the Act's impact on the asylum and immigration system.

Since the legislation came into force in October 2000 - enshrining the European Convention on Human Rights into British law for the first time - it had had a serious effect on the operation of the law, he said.

In the 21 years between 1975 and 1996, the convention was considered in 316 cases in the UK and affected the outcome, reasoning or procedure in 16 of those, said Mr Davis.

In the 18 months after the Act came in, it was considered in 431 cases - a 20-fold annual rise - and affected the outcome in 318 of those, he said.

As a result of the Act there had been a 40 per cent increase in the number of life sentenced prisoners being awarded parole in Scotland between 2001 and 2003, said the MP.

Department for Constitutional Affairs Minister Lord Filkin said: "The country is not in the grip a compensation culture - the conclusion of a recent independent report by the Better Regulation Taskforce.

"Overall accident claims actually fell last year by 9.5 per cent."

She said that the The Human Rights Act was passed in 1998 and received the support of all major political parties.