DAVID CAMERON RENEGES ON HIS HUMAN RIGHTS ACT PLEDGE

DAVID CAMERON RENEGES ON HIS HUMAN RIGHTS ACT PLEDGE

EXPRESS COMMENT

By Daily Express reporter

A PRIME Minister who identifies a key political problem and yet is then shown to be powerless to do anything about it risks swiftly losing authority.

That is the position David Cameron is perilously close to finding himself in after he identified the human rights regime that prevails in Britain as a key component of social decline.

In the wake of the terrifying inner-city riots of August the Prime Minister spoke of a “moral collapse” in society and said the Government would look to create a British Bill of Rights that would balance the liberties of suspected criminals with those of law-abiding citizens.

Our human rights laws were having “a corrosive influence on behaviour and morality” and had “undermined responsibility”, said Mr Cameron.

How he proposed to change that was always unclear given that he left the Government’s review of human rights legislation under the supervision of Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

Mr Clarke has now solved the conundrum by openly declaring there is “not the faintest chance” of Britain withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights or the European Court of Human Rights that interprets it.

This will not do.

Voters were delighted when Mr Cameron reacted to the riots by promising a tough new agenda based around a return to traditional British notions of right and wrong.

For that agenda to be cast aside within a month is more than a disappointment.

It is a disgrace.

Comment: I am not sure that there is a social decline. Even if this is the case, where is the evidence that human rights are to blame for it? A key political problem that I am aware of is the Prisoners Votes Case. It is this that David Cameron can legitimately be accused of failing to address. Human rights laws are not to blame for the MPs and Lords expenses scandal, the perpetrators themselves are to blame. What is wrong is for politicians to sign up to the European Convention and then renage on our obligations to honour it and abide by it and the Court's decisions. The problem is the notion that a British sense of right and wrong is better than Europe's. We are a rogue or pariah state.