The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) should have greater regard for the decisions of domestic courts, justice secretary Kenneth Clarke told a European ministerial conference today.
Speaking at a Council of Europe (CoE) conference in Izmir, Turkey on the Future of the ECtHR, Clarke said that the UK would continue to press for reform of the court following a series of judgments that have proved controversial.
He added that the UK was also concerned about the court’s backlog of more than 140,000 cases.
Clarke said: ‘In the UK we believe that the principles of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are fundamental to democracy. A country in which the government never loses a court case is not one in which most of us would wish to live.
‘However, we also believe that courts exist to serve the democracies over which they have jurisdiction.
‘The UK has always been a strong supporter of the ECtHR. But at times the court has been rather too ready to substitute its own judgment for that of national courts, without giving enough weight to the strength of the domestic legal system, or allowing for genuine differences of national approach.
‘There is also an urgent need to improve the court’s efficiency so that its vast backlog of cases is reduced, and for member states to send the best possible judges to serve on it.’
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The UK is due to take over the rotating chairmanship of the CoE in November, and the government has identified reform of the ECtHR as a key priority.
During the conference, Clarke met senior CoE officials, including secretary general Thorbjørn Jagland and ECtHR president Jean-Paul Costa.
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