A fringe debate on the Human Rights Act hosted by the Tory Reform
Group might not have been a crowd puller. But yesterday’s feline foul-up and the presence of
Attorney General Dominic Grieve, a firm advocate of human rights, ensured the event was a sell-out.
If Grieve had been advised against deepening internal animosity on the ‘cat flap’ furore, he ignored the direction. The TRG’s Egremont blog quotes Grieve as saying:
“We need to have a rational debate. We must be more productive than just going for the ‘meow’ factor.”
Then he added:
“The judicial interpretation and case workload of the European Court ought to be a concern for the UK and other European countries. If Britain wants a Bill of Rights we can have one, but we have to accept that the coalition circumscribes what we can do.”
Grieve’s comment about the interpretation and caseload of the ECHR illustrates that the supporters of the basic status quo are not unthinking.
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