Human rights attack

Human rights attack

From: Paul Sullivan – London

A retiring Law Lord has made a scathing attack on the European Court of Human Rights. Lord Hoffmann lamented how the Court had ‘found against Britain’. Whilst stating that he supported the ECHR, he did not think it should interfere with domestic law.

Having lost a few judgments to the Court over the years, Lord Hoffmann and his associates are probably smarting over the hole they have dug themselves into trying to prevent British prisoners exercising their right to vote; an issue which could well have created a situation where the next election might have been invalid.

Most of the improvements to prisoners’ welfare and conditions over recent years have been hard won in Europe by prisoners and former prisoners such as John Hirst determined to improve their lot and enforce their rights. British judges, so entangled with their paymasters and employers (the Government), have continually let down prisoners and their families, and it is a sad reflection on 20th Century Britain that we need to have proper justice and upholding of our rights demonstrated to us by what Lord Hoffmann haughtily describes as “… dozens of highly paid ’judges’ from countries like Bulgaria, Russia and Romania, which have almost no rule of law themselves. These upstart briefs consider it a good day’s work to overrule the democratically passed laws of ancient States like Britain.”

Of course, with nearly 90,000 disenfranchised prisoners, it could be argued that our laws are not democratic. The Judges and Law Lords are appointed by the Government, so they hardly have an incentive to bite the hand that feeds them.

Lord Hoffmann himself sat on several important cases in the House of Lords, including the Belmarsh Terrorism case which ruled that ‘detention without trial’ laws had been imposed unfairly. He said, "The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."

It is easy to denigrate the European Court and make fun of its jurisdiction, its decisions and its member states, however if it has done nothing else it has made British politicians stop and think, and forced them to act in a way that is fair and not just convenient to the Government.