The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has criticised the Conservative party’s proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.
No one can doubt that Mr Starmer is a highly respected authority on the subject of human rights. His former Doughty Street chambers specialise in that area of law and he was himself professionally involved as counsel in a number of high-profile human rights cases.
However, it cannot be denied that there is a significant level of dissatisfaction with the Human Rights Act and the way it has been seen to operate in practice; there was huge public concern, for example, over the inability of the Government to deport the convicted murderer of the headteacher, Philip Lawrence.
The Conservative party is right to address this concern and to undertake to amend the legislation as soon as possible.
Ultimately, however, as Mr Starmer knows, it will be a matter for Parliament; which is, as I am sure he’d agree, exactly as it should be.
You say there is public concern, but where did that come from? Politicians and the media perpetuating exactly the same myths that the DPP was rightly criticising in his lecture.
You say the HRA should be amended. Can you explain how the amendment would allow deportations in the case you mention? Surely it would just result in long and expensive appeals to Europe, where you would lose. And then what?
And regardless, human rights are not something you can go around selectively removing from groups of people like immigrants and criminals – they are universal and belong to everyone, or they are meaningless. And they most especially apply to groups it is easy to victimise because they are exactly the people most likely to need them.
Perhaps you would like to be clearer about what other rights you intend to remove and from who? And can you explain how this would impact on ECHR obligations? Would you just revert to the situation of Britons having to appeal all the way to Europe to force the British government to accept these human rights obligations?
And if so, is that because you really want to set up another UK Vs Europe clash to promote a eurosceptic agenda?