The human rights smokescreen

Dennis Churchill

So the French courts interpret this in the same way?
The problem is with our judges, as is the mad levels of compensation awarded.

Vulture

Your own words give this boring old game away David: 'carefully choreographed...all a smokescreen'.

In other words these are mere words designed to temporarily placate the members of the Stupid Party gathered in Manchester and fool the rest of us into thinking that the Tories can or will do something ...anything..about the subjection of this land to the rule of foreign judges.

They can't. And they won't. Their 'differences' with the Lib Dems are make-believe, and they are all singing from the same hymn-sheet. The one supplied by our masters in Europe.

Incidentally, why has the sinister Dr Death aka Evan Harris got a free pass to pontificate on the BBC whenever he wishes? He's just another ex-MP like Lembit Opik booted out by the electorate.

There are plenty of Lib Dems who weren't booted out ( eg. Tim farron , Vince Cable, Huhne or Hughes) who will happily bitch.
So why do we have to keep hearing from this loser Harris with his creepy love of abortion and euthanasia?

dorothy wilson

One way of taking action on this without "needlessly exposing the taxpayer" would be to limit legal aid.

Alan Douglas

Expelling someone does NOT stop his rights to a family life - the family can move to where he is. Rather than talk about "criminals" we should revert to the previous "outlaws" - does what it says on the tin - they have put themselves outside the law, therefore are not protected by it.

Alan Douglas

Baron

don't the foreign criminals also have the human right to breathe the air wherever they choose, like here?

Frank P

You seem to be determined to illustrate the allegation by Verity that Cameron has a mouth like a hen's 'parson's nose'. The picture above is proof-positive.

Maddy1

Well no one explains how the other members seem to escape all the trouble we have, here. Greece wants the money but fails to implement even the most basic of directives and nothing seems to happen.
France has no difficulty in deporting it's turbulent religious fanatics.

McClane

Who is Evan Harris?

I thought he was some sort of pro-euthanasia activist.

MikeF

No-one has a 'right' to a family life because no-one else is under an obligation to provide them with one. This isn't to say that such a lifestyle is not desirable or admirable but it isn't a right. If it were then it would be wrong to send anyone with a 'family life' to prison irrespective of what they had done.

tom jones

Is this enough? No. BUT it's much better than Labour's Euro policy of rolling over to every single request so I'm grateful for that. Oh God! Imagine Europe's power over us at the end of a Lib-Lab term! There'd be no going back.

Tiberius

If the respective judiciaries had any common sense, there wouldn't need to be an issue here at all.

The criminals by definition have threatened the right to family life of their victims. So the criminals are out - why the need to go any further?

Bellevue

How do the French deal with this sort of thing? Someone needs to check, and then we can do the same as them.

Slim Jim

What I cannot understand is why the 'inalienable rights' of an individual convicted of a criminal offence can trump the rights of the law-abiding majority. Even more confusing is why the supporters of the HRA can't bring themselves to admit that there are serious flaws in its application.

strapworld

Vulture makes a point, although according to that fearless writer of this parish Mr Nelson who writes on another piece "One problem with the new era of party conferences — ie, a money-spinning jamboree for the political class with hardly an activist in sight — is that you can’t meaningfully talk about the ‘mood of the hall’. The hall is now filled with journos or lobbyists, and it was half-empty for Boris today".

Party conferences today do not allow local Associations to bring moptions for debate. We are treated to this parade of fourth and fifth class politicians, with the odd second class one, who have no idea of oratory watsoever. No idea of how to use the idiots autocues before them. All sounding bored and utterly boring.(Eric Pickles was a masterclass in 'How not to deliver a speech'!) Empty interviews on the 'stage' Both Labour and Conservative have ruined what used to be something to watch and listen to. So it is no wonder, in my opinion, that so few activists 'party faithful' attend these showcases.

It is no wonder that people have turned away from politics.

It is time to bring a halt to them all.

Rue de la Loi

As other have noted, this is nothing more than a "titillating move" and nothing in the post supports the conclusion that "the government intends to use its forthcoming chairmanship of the Council of Europe to force change". Merely holding the chairmanship of the Council of Europe is not enough to "force" change and even if it were, there is nothing objectionable in the terms of Article 8 - provided the balancing of interests permitted by Article 8(2) is sensibly applied. The problem is that it is not sensibly applied and the cause of that problem is the activism of the judges both at home and in Strasbourg, who find it so much more comforting to uphold the rights of those relying on Article 8 to resist a measure such as deportation than to take account of the unheard voices of those whose human rights are liable to be extinguished if the deportation is not carried out.

The reason this is such a problem in Britain is the proliferation of organisations (sometimes indirectly funded by the taxpayer) who constitute a well funded and well-lawyered lobby for the interests of the delinquent over those of the peaceable majority. Consider for example the Supreme Court decision in Lumba, which endorsed the Alice in Wonderland proposition that a foreign released prisoner was unlawfully detained pending deportation, because he was detained pursuant to an unpublished Home Office policy, notwithstanding that he could quite lawfully have been detained under the published policy. This extravaganza of arid posturing by the human rights lobby not only went all the way to the Supreme Court, but did so with interventions from Justice and Bail for Immigration Detainees. The cost to the taxpayer of such cases is huge, but money is always found to fund them.

The judges are however highly selective in their activism: those seeking to uphold human rights in pursuit of the "wrong" cause will get short shrift. The obligation in the UK to inform the authorities of the identity of the driver of a car caught by a speed camera clearly infringes the ECHR privilege against self incrimination. Despite this being an absolute right under the ECHR, with no balancing exception such as is found in Article 8(2) in relation to the right to a family, the ECHR held in O'Halloran v UK that this obligation did not breach the ECHR.

The exploitation of the ECHR in a manner inimical to the interests of the majority will continue: it is embedded in the system and nothing Mrs May says in Manchester will change this.

bojimbo

The French don't give a crap about the system .

Slim Jim

Rue de la Roi @ 2:41pm - an excellent post! The problem is indeed that a perverse political culture has infected this Sceptred Isle, and we really need to get to grips with it very quickly.

WetherspoonThree

It appears to me that the most vociferous defenders of the Human Rights Act, in its present 'unsatisfactory' form, are those who have a vested interest in trying make some legal sense of the legislation. And it is that same group that is hugely over represented in parliament where their pernicious influence seems determined to resist anything which would bring clarity and understanding to this deeply unpopular piece of legislation.

But whilst lawyers may be programmed to resist change and accept criticism they might wish to bear in mind that laws, like the people who make them, ought to make the effort to garner public support otherwise they risk demoralising further an already deeply cyncical electorate.

Jeremy Poynton

I do not understand why it is that the UK is the only country in the world that seems to guarantee the right to "family life".