Thursday, 16 June 2011
We need to control the spread of human rights, Supreme Court judge says
The spread of human rights across all parts of society should be controlled or it will increasingly be opposed by Government and Parliament, a senior judge has said.
Baroness Hale of Richmond also suggested that European judges may have got it wrong when they ruled that prisoners should have the right to vote.
The news could embolden David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to defy the European Court of Human Rights and refuse to give prisoners the vote.
In a speech, Lady Hale, a Justice of the Supreme Court, said there were “natural limits” against the application of the European Convention on Human Rights.
She described the Convention, which was introduced in the UK as the Human Rights Act in 2000, as a “living tree” whose growth had to be controlled.
She told an audience at Gresham College in London, she said: “As a supporter of the Convention and the work of the Supreme Court, my plea to them is to accept there are some natural limits to the growth and development of the living tree.
“Otherwise, I have a fear that their judgements and those of the national courts which follow them, will increasingly be defied by our governments and Parliaments. This is a very rare phenomenon at present and long may it remain so.”
Lady Hale touched on the ongoing row about the rights of prisoners to vote, suggesting that this was an example of judges going too far.
National courts had to try “loyally to keep pace with the evolution and on occasions to make a reasonable prediction of where Strasbourg will go next.
“In the end, the standard most often appealed to in the court’s jurisprudence is the common European understanding.”
Sometimes judges relied on domestic legislation, or other times by “evolving European attitudes and beliefs”.
She added: “Sometimes, as in Hirst v United Kingdom [which said that a blanket ban on giving prisoners the vote was against the Convention] it seems to get some way ahead of both, because bans on prisoners’ voting are common throughout Europe.”
Human rights rulings, she said, had to take into account the views of the individual parliaments as well.
They “should seek to strike a fair balance, between the universal values of freedom and equality embodied in the Convention, and the particular choices made by the democratically-elected Parliaments of the member states”, she said.
Lady Hale added: “Some values, such as the right to life and freedom from torture, are non-negotiable but others are more delicately nuanced.”
The speech could embolden Mr Cameron, who is against giving prisoners the right to vote, to face down the European Court and refuse to agree to the measure. MPs voted overwhelmingly in February not to give prisoners the vote.
In April a leaked Government document said the European court had no legal powers to force officials to pay compensation for denying prisoners their human rights.
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Not quite what we all want but it's a start.
We have Foreign MASS MURDERERS, RAPISTS, PAEDOPHILES etc all claiming a "RIGHT TO LIFE" in this country. They have NO RIGHT TO LIFE IN BRITAIN, ONLY THE INDIGENOUS BRITISH HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF THAT RIGHT. And it's about time we fought (on the streets if necessary) for OUR RIGHTS AS AN INDIGENOUS POPULATION.
The "Growing Tree" which she describes can be pruned and can be cut down completely if necessary. I think it's NECESSARY to cut that tree down now.