This week’s Brighton conference on the future of Europe’s human rights court will end in a meaningless ‘fudge’, with no serious debate to address the issues dividing the governments of the 47 European states attending, one of Britain’s leading political scientists has predicted.

Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who last month resigned from the government body set up to examine the need for a British bill of rights, said that the Brighton conference would merely ‘gold-plate’ the increasing conflict between human rights organisations and parliamentary and public opinion.

He said that the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will resist any political move to take away its sovereignty and there will only be ‘short-term respect’ for Britain’s attempts.

Pinto-Duschinsky told the Gazette: ‘We need to debate the basic issues in a deeper, freer way so as to break the deadlock of hostile statements regularly traded by Council of Europe (CoE) member states. Otherwise all that will be achieved is a fudge.’

Other human rights experts are also sceptical about the outcome of the conference. A German diplomat said that the proposed reforms to the court ‘should be seen within the context of a series of UK attacks on European institutions’, while a French expert told the Gazette that the proposed declaration was ‘flawed by the absence of lawyers’ input’.

The Brighton conference, which is to be attended by ministers from the 47 member states of the CoE, marks the culmination of the UK’s six-month chairmanship of the CoE. It is the third such conference to attempt to reform the ECtHR in three years, following Interlaken in 2010 and Izmir in 2011. The coalition says that the Brighton conference, unlike its two predecessors, seeks a ‘political commitment’ to reform, rather that merely asking for an agreement to an unenforceable declaration.

Albania takes over the CoE chair in May, followed by Andorra.