Chilling effect of Euro judges: Public safety being put at risk by human rights court, warns top Lib Dem lawyer - 21st Apr 2011

(IMAGE: Killer Mohammed Ibrahim allowed to stay after the United Kingdom gave him his Human Rights and 12 year Amy Houston lost her life. What about her Human Rights, her right to life was taken away, does she not deserve better?)

Rulings by unelected judges in Strasbourg are having a ‘chilling effect’ on public safety in Britain, a senior government adviser warns today.

Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat peer, said the European Court of Human Rights had placed itself on a ‘collision course’ with the UK Parliament.

In particular, he attacked the way the European Convention on Human Rights was blocking the removal of foreign criminals and terror suspects.

Lord Carlile, a Home Office adviser on terrorism, said: ‘A narrow interpretation of the convention has had a chilling effect on deportation, and thereby on public safety.’

The fact that such scathing comments are being made by a Lib Dem grandee will reopen the controversy over human rights law.

Prime Minister David Cameron promised to reform the law in opposition, but he has since been frustrated by his Lib Dem coalition partners.

The peer made his remarks in the foreword to a new report by Tory MP Dominic Raab, an expert in international law who led the backbench revolt against prisoner voting.

The pamphlet, for the Civitas think-tank, calls for urgent reform of human rights legislation to keep European judges from deciding British law.

Mr Raab says that, by granting prisoners the vote, Strasbourg went beyond simply interpreting the convention, which was deliberately worded to allow members states to disenfranchise criminals. Instead, Strasbourg is now ‘making law’. As a result, Mr Raab says democratic policy-making increasingly stands at the mercy of unelected judges. Read More