Human Rights

Absolutely not. I am simply pointing out that the decision was made under the ECHR. I very much hope that a responsible Home Secretary would never return somebody who faced the risk of torture. My purpose is to point out that it is not the Human Rights Act, but the European convention, that is responsible. Regarding the Anthony Rice case, on 10 May 2006 Her Majesty’s inspector of probation published a report of his review of the case of Anthony Rice. The report found that one of the reasons why the Parole Board had underestimated the risk of harm to others when it decided that Rice was safe to release was that"““the people managing his case started to allow public protection considerations to be undermined by its human rights considerations””." At the time the Human Rights Act was introduced, it was the stated aspiration of the Government that the Act would be more than merely a technical instrument to enable courts to adjudicate on the basis of the ECHR. It was hoped that the Act would bring about a fundamental transformation towards a ““human rights culture””. The Anthony Rice case suggests that the Government have been all too successful in creating precisely such a culture. A vague ““human rights culture”” ensured that parole officials set a convicted criminal free to murder. Mr. Rice was set free because the Parole Board feared that human rights legislation meant that if it did not release him under licence, the courts would step in and do so anyway. The third myth about human rights is represented by the failure to deport foreign prisoners. On 3 May 2006 the Home Secretary made a statement to the House setting out proposals to change the system governing the deportation of foreign prisoners. The statement followed the revelation that substantial numbers of foreign prisoners who would have been considered for deportation on their release had instead been freed into the community. Again, it is deeply invidious to imply that human rights legislation is not at fault for that catastrophic failure of public policy. The courts have chosen to interpret articles of the ECHR, regardless of whether or not the ECHR is incorporated into UK law, in such a way as to effectively prevent deportation to many third countries, including other countries that have signed up to the convention. It is not simply the Human Rights Act that is at fault, but rather the European convention on human rights and the courts’ willingness to adjudicate on the basis of it that is the problem. We should seek to treat not the symptoms, but the fundamental cause of the problem—the European convention itself.