Law can be a 'nuisance if you want to break it'

It has been ‘demonised as the elephant in the room, a kangaroo court and a Mickey Mouse tribunal’.

What’s more, ‘the Dublin government always complies with it - failure to do so is not a political option’.

However, ‘it’s not a dry and remote text designed to protect unpopular minorities’.

Nonetheless, according to a Tory MP, ‘it is undermining the sovereignty of parliament and the rule of law’.

And, the jewel in the crown, the UK will become a ‘pariah state’ if we turn our back on it, according to no less an authority than attorney general Dominic Grieve.

With the exception of the Grieve comment - he was quoted by one of the speakers - all these statements were made at last week’s Law Society and British Institute of Human Rights event to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Human Rights Act (HRA), which enshrines the ECHR in the law of England and Wales, was also debated, as was that much maligned institution in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights.

British lawyer Sir Nicolas Bratza, who until a year ago was president of the Strasbourg court, gave the keynote speech. Unsurprisingly, he was staunch in his defence of the court and critical of the virulent attacks upon it by sections of the British media and by certain politicians.

One such politician is Mark Reckless, a Tory MP and eurosceptic, and a panellist at the ECHR event. He continues to be incensed by Abu Qatada and his, ultimately fruitless, resistance to going back to Jordan to face charges based on evidence obtained by torture.

Reckless also said that he wants to see elected representatives in the Strasbourg court who can be thrown out by the electorate if it sees fit. Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan, another panellist, lost no time in telling him that, unlike their counterparts in the UK, the Strasbourg judges were indeed elected to their posts.

Asked about the impact on the UK’s international reputation if it withdrew from the ECHR, Reckless gave his opinion that by holding an in-out referendum, we were setting an example to the world of ‘democratisation of process’.

The third political panellist, Julian Huppert MP, a Liberal Democrat, ventured that it would be very bad for our international reputation, making us a ‘pariah state alongside Belarus’ - the only European state not to have signed up to the ECHR and the state frequently described as the last dictatorship in Europe. Huppert added that ‘law can be a nuisance if you want to break it’, which would seem to be the main motivation behind withdrawing from the ECHR. Khan concurred: ‘This government doesn’t like to be held to account, which is why it is barring, for example, judicial reviews.’

The supporters of the ECHR, and by extension of the HRA and the Strasbourg court, were unanimous in calling for more balanced coverage of human rights in the media. UK citizens should be reminded, they said, that the ECHR rose from the ashes of World War II, was the brainchild of Winston Churchill and was largely drafted by British lawyers.

It is there to protect everyone, they said, not just minorities, and enshrines the most basic of human rights, such as those for life, fair trials and freedom from torture.

Jonathan Rayner is a Gazette staff writer