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Leeds English Democrats Chairman Chris Beverley discusses the Conservative Party's attitudes to Human Rights and their proposed reform of the European Court of Human Rights. Since then Tory Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has exposed further inconsistencies within his party over the issue of human rights laws and the European Court of Human Rights in particular. It was only very recently that Mr Clarke attempted to rubbish the sentiments expressed by his party colleague Theresa May, who called for an end to the abuse of the Human Rights act at the Tory party conference and drew attention to the now infamous case of a Bolivian immigrant who appears to have been spared deportation so as to avoid infringing upon his human rights by separating him from his pet cat (see our article on this here) It would now appear that Mr Clarke has changed his tune. Mr Clarke has declared that; 'The biggest priority for the British Government as a whole is to try and get some reform of the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. There's a lot of support among other member states for reform and quite a lot of support in the court itself and in the Council of Europe.' He wants the Court to; 'stop entertaining things which are trivial' and 'concentrate on the things that are properly the work of an international court'. This statement was given in advance of Britain's taking over next month of the rotating chairmanship of the Council of Europe, which is the organisation which controls the European Court of Human Rights. The Council of Europe predates the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights is not an EU institution, as was explained here. The distinction is an important one as the desire to escape some of the crazy decisions of the European Court of Human Rights is often cited as a reason to leave the EU, despite this being a non-sequitur. It seems the Daily Mail doesn't know the difference either, as on their article on this subject which can be viewed here, it is stated: "His latest remarks, however, echo those of Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who on Monday accused EU (sic) judges of being too keen to overturn UK court decisions. Mr Grieve insisted social policy issues such as prisoner voting were for Parliament to decide, and the ECHR was wrong to overturn its will." Leaving aside the issue of the Tories' inconsistency and downright hypocrisy, the substantive issue is an important one for all of us. Could Britain's chairmanship of the Council of Europe really be used to trigger reform of the European Court of Human Rights? If the Strasbourg court could be reformed in a way which rediscovers its original purpose, which was to enshrine in international law the fundamental and immutable human rights that were abused so egregiously during and in the aftermath of the Second World War and to act as a deterrent to regimes that seek to pursue genocide and ethnic cleansing etc., as opposed to the Court being used to pursue all manner of politically correct outrages and interfere with the sovereignty of individual member states, then this is surely to be welcomed. It would hardly be prudent to take the Tories on their word, however, particularly over anything to do with 'Europe', so we will not be holding our breath! Read more articles by Chris Beverley here: www.chrisbeverley.com
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Tory Hot Air on Human Rights?
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