(Newswire.net — June 1, 2015) — The Conservative British government is threatening to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the UK justice secretary Chris Grayling has said.
The judge insists UK courts no longer automatically defer to ECHR’s rulings, while lawyers rail against Britain’s potential repeal of the Human Rights Act, the Guardian reported. Stating that courts in Britain hear human rights law in less than 1% of cases in decades, UK judges demand to have the right to veto and regain the legal authority to deport foreign criminals. If not, Britain will leave the ECHR.
“Plans by the Tories to withdraw from the ECHR risked repeating history and a gradual erosion of human rights laws in Britain,” warned Professor François Crépeau, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
The British Conservatives proposed a British Bill of Rights, which will protect the human rights. As long as the rights are protected in the same way as the ECHR, professor Crépeau said he doesn’t mind. However, the move could have a serious negative impact as Britain is trying to cut the means of the control that holds all EU Human Rights Convention countries in check.
The authority of the court in Strasbourg would be severely curtailed, with parliament given the final say in deciding whether or not to adopt ECHR decisions. Basically, no one would control the controller, providing UK courts the right to interpret the human rights law as they feel, and would answer to no one.
Crépeau was reminded of the same pattern in Nazi Germany just before World War 2, when Germany decided they would interpret the international human rights law according their interest.
Crépeau’s comments provoked outrage among some Tories, the Guardian reported. The Justice Minister Dominic Raab, called Crépeau’s comments “ludicrous” and “offensive”.
“Comparing proposals for a British Bill of Rights to the Nazi persecution of the Jews is ignorant and offensive,” said Raab.
On the other hand, there are many senior Conservatives who believe leaving EU’s law platform is not only wrong but dangerous as well. Ken Clarke, a pro-European, said that doing so would be “unthinkable” and “absurd”, the Guardian quoted.
“I personally think it’s unthinkable, we should leave the European Convention on Human Rights; it was drafted by British lawyers after the Second World War in order to protect the values for which we fought the War for,” he said.
Scotland has a different legal system than the rest of the UK and has said it would block any attempts by London to withdraw it from the convention, however, the UK Justice Secretary, Michael Gove said Sunday that he considers drafting a separate English Bill of Rights to allow Scotland to keep the ECHR.