It is important to remember that the Human Rights Act was to protect honest citizens from the excesses of the government not to protect terrorists from the law and provide a fat income for solicitors.
We will not change human rights law admits minister: Green defies outrage over Qatada ruling.
Scroll down to read how prisoners getting the vote in the UK
Government defeat on Qatada deportation put spotlight on the ECHR
Theresa May and Michael Fabricant both say they want to ditch the convention
But justice minister Damian Green said no plans were being made to do so. They cannot do so while the UK is locked into the EU.
Opposition figures admit that there is a need for reform in light of radical cleric’s case.
The ECHR
Europe has had a long history of abuse of Human Rights from the Feudal System, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic code to Hitler’s NSDAP and Stalin’s Soviet Eastern European states.
The European Court of Human Rights was started after WWII from an initiative by Eleanor Roosevelt because of the appalling abuse of Human Rights in Europe during the Nazi era. This was before the appalling behaviour of Stalin became exposed as very similar to the behaviour of the Nazi party.
It initially consisted of 12 very respected and experienced judges.
Now the ECHR consists of 47 judges, many of whom are appointed more for their political opinions than their legal expertise. Many were also complicit in the legal system of East European countries in their communist past.
Initially the ECHR was a stand alone court before the EU was established. Since then it is being slowly hi-jacked by the EU. In theory the ECHR and the EU are quite separate institutions. The ECHR is strictly under the Council of Europe (CoE). However they both fly the same flag (actually not really a flag but a banner*) and if a country is in the CoE then they required to ‘voluntarily’ sign up to the ECHR. In practice the ECHR is inextricably linked with the EU and the CoE and is steadily becoming an agent of the European Commission.
Its remit is not now to decide justice but to make judgements the further ‘ever closer union with the EU’. So why have our government agreed to remain subject to the ECHR.
Very few of the new breed of judges have any knowledge of English Common Law and those who do wish to see it replaced with the EU Napoleonic Corpus Juris.
In Corpus Juris you can be arrested without evidence, held in custody for perhaps years without charge and you are deemed guilty until you can prove your innocence. If you are in prison that is almost impossible. There is no Habeas Corpus, right of silence or onus on the prosecution to prove your guilt.
The (unelected) European Commission intend that there should be a common legal system across the EU. That system will be Corpus Juris and English Common Law is to be replaced by CJ.
* It is only States that have flags. As the EU is not a state it cannot have a flag; it is a banner.
However some years ago, people objected to the flying of the EU flag and said it
required planning permission because it was not a national flag and therefore an “advertisement” .
Mr Prescott (or a friend of his) it had it reclassified as a bona fide flag. However changing the name does not change its nature. Calling a duck a chicken does not make it a chicken.
© Mick Greenhough 2012
Last week Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, tabled proposals which the government hopes will form the basis of the UK’s renegotiated relationship with the European Union. Politically, the proposals may be just the job: a new commitment to enhance competitiveness, proposals to limit benefits to migrants, recognition that member states’ different aspirations for further integration must be respected, and creation of a ‘red card’ mechanism to block EU legislation. Legally, however, they raise more questions than they answer.
This ought to have been an opportunity to look at the Court of Justice of the European Union, whose reach has extended to a point where the status quo is untenable. Aside from eroding national sovereignty (which it does) the current situation also undermines legal certainty — which, in turn, undermines good governance. Proper reform needs to address the EU legal order, in particular the jurisdictional muscle-flexing of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg. The new proposals do not do this. Instead, they duck the issue entirely — clearing the way for a whole new body of EU rights law.
The problem lies in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which was solemnly proclaimed in 2000. It described 50 new ‘rights, freedoms and principles’ in addition to the 20-odd rights in the European Convention of Human Rights. So the Charter was a far more sweeping document. In 2007 it was given legal force by the Lisbon Treaty. At the time, it was loudly proclaimed that this would change nothing: that it just underlined what was anyway the case. Smelling a rat, the Labour government asked for — and was given — an assurance in writing that Britain would not be affected by the Charter. It was called ‘Protocol 30’.
Before the ink had dried on Protocol 30, concerns were voiced about its precise meaning and effect. Tony Blair assured the Commons that there was nothing to worry about: ‘It is absolutely clear that we have an opt-out from both the Charter and judicial and home affairs.’ David Miliband, then Foreign Secretary, also assured us that the Charter would not ‘extend the reach of European courts into British law’. Four years later, the coalition government was giving similar assurances: in March 2011 Ken Clarke, then Justice Secretary, said that the Charter was of more presentational importance and did ‘not actually change anything’.
In English courts, however, another picture has been emerging. Take the case of ‘NS’, an Afghan asylum seeker who arrived in the UK seven years ago. Given that he had come via Greece, where he had been arrested, the UK sought to return him there under the Dublin Convention. But he argued that the treatment of asylum seekers in Greece amounted to ‘degrading’ treatment, contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. He also sought to invoke the Charter of Fundamental Rights — which, according to Messrs Blair, Miliband and Clarke, should have been legally impossible.
This was referred to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg which ruled (in effect, and after some domestic backsliding) that the British opt-out had no legal force and the Charter of Fundamental Rights applied in the UK in precisely the same way as in any other member state. Since then, the English courts have increasingly been urged to recognise and give effect to new Charter-based rights in areas of law as diverse as employment disputes, immigration and asylum claims.
So where are we now? Mr Justice Mostyn has put it well. In 1998, the Human Rights Act incorporated large parts of the European Convention on Human Rights — but not all of it. Some parts were deliberately missed out by Parliament. Yet the Charter, he said, ‘contains all of those missing parts — and a great deal more’. In spite of Blair’s endeavours, he said, ‘it would seem that the much wider Charter of Rights is now part of our domestic law’. Moreover, he said, it ‘would remain part of our domestic law even if the Human Rights Act were repealed’.
Which raises an interesting question. The Tusk proposals suggest that the government does not intend to use this ‘renegotiation’ to reassert any form of Charter opt-out or control over its scope. So why repeal the Human Rights Act while the Charter, with its far wider panoply of rights, remains?
As David Anderson QC and Dr Cian Murphy have argued, the Charter — as it now stands — requires ‘enormous faith to be placed in the Court of Justice, its ultimate arbiter’. My current view is that a court which has been known in cases of vital importance to ignore its own rulings (viz, the infamous Digital Rights Ireland case), and give no reasoned explanation for doing so, is acting capriciously rather than judiciously. It does not inspire much faith.
Now, when Britain is debating its relationship to the EU, we should state our position afresh. Here is an opportunity to restore a measure of constitutional coherence. Let us not pass it by.
Marina Wheeler is a human rights lawyer practising at One Crown Office Row. She was called to the bar in 1987 and took silk last month. A longer version of this article can be found on ukhumanrightsblog.com. Marina Wheeler is a human rights lawyer practising at One Crown Office Row. She was called to the bar in 1987 and took silk last month.
Composition of the Court now 47 judges
(in order of precedence as at 23.05.2011)
| Name | Elected in respect of: |
| Jean-Paul Costa, President | France |
| Nicolas Bratza, Vice-President | United Kingdom |
| Françoise Tulkens, Vice-President | Belgium |
| Josep Casadevall, Section President | Andorra |
| Nina Vajić, Section President | Croatia |
| Dean Spielmann, Section President | Luxembourg |
| Corneliu Bîrsan | Romania |
| Peer Lorenzen | Denmark |
| Karel Jungwiert | CzechRepublic |
| Boštjan Zupančič | Slovenia |
| Anatoly Kovler | Russian Federation |
| Elisabeth Steiner | Austria |
| Lech Garlicki | Poland |
| Elisabet Fura | Sweden |
| Alvina Gyulumyan | Armenia |
| Khanlar Hajiyev | Azerbaijan |
| Ljiljana Mijović | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Egbert Myjer | Netherlands |
| Sverre Erik Jebens | Norway |
| Davíd Thór Björgvinsson | Iceland |
| Danutė Jočienė | Lithuania |
| Ján Šikuta | SlovakRepublic |
| Dragoljub Popović | Serbia |
| Ineta Ziemele | Latvia |
| Mark Villiger | Liechtenstein |
| Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre | Monaco |
| Päivi Hirvelä | Finland |
| Giorgio Malinverni | Switzerland |
| George Nicolaou | Cyprus |
| Luis López Guerra | Spain |
| András Sajó | Hungary |
| Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska | “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” |
| Ledi Bianku | Albania |
| Nona Tsotsoria | Georgia |
| Ann Power | Ireland |
| Zdravka Kalaydjieva | Bulgaria |
| Işıl Karakaş | Turkey |
| Mihai Poalelungi | Moldova |
| Nebojša Vučinić | Montenegro |
| Kristina Pardalos | San Marino |
| Guido Raimondi | Italy |
| Ganna Yudkivska | Ukraine |
| Vincent A. De Gaetano | Malta |
| Angelika Nußberger | Germany |
| Julia Laffranque | Estonia |
| Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque | Portugal |
| Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos | Greece |
Erik Fribergh, Registrar Michael O’Boyle, Deputy Registrar
Need to know which judges have limited experience and which are ex-communist judges.
From the time of Lord Longford in the 60s the UK legal profession has steadily taken on a philosophy that the victim is equally guilty as the criminal.
This has been consolidated by the steady infiltration since then of the Frankfurt School into the police as well as the legal professionThe European Court of Human Rights. was an initiative by Eleanor Roosevelt after WWII. It consisted of 12 highly respected and experienced judges. Now there are 47 judges of whom most are appointed on political grounds. Many have limited legal expertise while others were apparatchiks of communist East Europe. Few have any knowledge of, nor interest in, English Common law where you cannot be arrested without evidence nor held in custody without charge. You can be under EU Corpus Juris.
The ECHR consider the Human Rights of criminals to be of equal importance to those of their victims and the victim of a crime is as equally guilty as the criminal but biased in favour of the criminal.
They support the philosophy of the Frankfurt School.
Are they part of the EU? Well they fly the EU flag – the most potent symbol of allegiance. However as the EU is not a state its ‘flag’ is in fact only a banner.
(in order of precedence as at 01.11.2012)
| Name | Elected in respect of: |
| Dean Spielmann, President | Luxembourg |
| Josep Casadevall, Vice-President | Andorra |
| Guido Raimondi, Vice-President | Italy |
| Ineta Ziemele, Section President | Latvia |
| Mark Villiger, Section President | Liechtenstein |
| Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre, Section President | Monaco |
| Corneliu Bîrsan | Romania |
| Peer Lorenzen | Denmark |
| Boštjan Zupančič | Slovenia |
| Nina Vajić | Croatia |
| Anatoly Kovler | Russian Federation |
| Elisabeth Steiner | Austria |
| Alvina Gyulumyan | Armenia |
| Khanlar Hajiyev | Azerbaijan |
| Davíd Thór Björgvinsson | Iceland |
| Danutė Jočienė | Lithuania |
| Ján Šikuta | Slovak Republic |
| Dragoljub Popović | Serbia |
| Päivi Hirvelä | Finland |
| George Nicolaou | Cyprus |
| Luis López Guerra | Spain |
| András Sajó | Hungary |
| Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska | “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” |
| Ledi Bianku | Albania |
| Nona Tsotsoria | Georgia |
| Ann Power-Forde | Ireland |
| Zdravka Kalaydjieva | Bulgaria |
| Işıl Karakaş | Turkey |
| Nebojša Vučinić | Montenegro |
| Kristina Pardalos | San Marino |
| Ganna Yudkivska | Ukraine |
| Vincent A. De Gaetano | Malta |
| Angelika Nußberger | Germany |
| Julia Laffranque | Estonia |
| Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque | Portugal |
| Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos | Greece |
| Erik Møse | Norway |
| Helen Keller | Switzerland |
| André Potocki | France |
| Paul Lemmens | Belgium |
| Helena Jäderblom | Sweden |
| Paul Mahoney | United Kingdom |
| Aleš Pejchal | Czech Republic |
| Johannes Silvis | Netherlands |
| Krzysztof Wojtyczek | Poland |
Who are you going to vote for Fletch? Paul Mahoney’s recommendations could see politicians campaigning in jails at the next election
PUBLISHED: 00:05, 4 October 2013 | UPDATED: 01:33, 4 October 2013
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Representative? Paul Mahoney hasn’t practised law in the UK since the Seventies and has never sat as a judge in this country
Axe murderers will be given the vote if Britain’s representative on the European Court of Human Rights gets his way.
Paul Mahoney told a cross-party group of politicians that all prisoners should be allowed to participate in elections.
At a meeting in Strasbourg, he said: ‘If you are killed by an axe murderer, I would still give him the vote. He would have a say.’
Mahoney wants Parliament to reverse its decision to defy the ECHR’s ruling that a blanket ban on letting jail inmates vote is illegal.
He claims that refusal to comply with the edict is ‘damaging’ our reputation abroad. His comments have been interpreted as support for John Hirst, who served 25 years for killing his landlady with an axe.
Hirst has been campaigning for all prisoners to get the vote, with the full backing of the parasitical ‘yuman rites’ industry.
Call Me Dave has said that the thought of letting prisoners take part in elections makes him feel ‘physically sick’.
When the European court’s ruling came before the House of Commons it was rejected by the overwhelming margin of more than ten to one.
So who the hell is Paul Mahoney and in what sense could he be said to ‘represent’ Britain? He certainly doesn’t represent the wishes of Parliament or the vast majority of the British people.
How did he get to ‘represent’ Britain in Europe’s supreme court? Mahoney hasn’t practised law here since the Seventies and has never sat as a judge in this country.
His only judicial experience was a spell chairing something called the EU Civil Service Tribunal, a glorified works council which rules on internal employment disputes in Brussels.
Mahoney is a career bureaucrat, having spent three decades working for the Council of Europe, the body which appointed him as a judge in 2012 on a tax-free salary of £150,000.
More…
His name was put forward by the Ministry of Justice. He was chosen from a short-list of three, which also included Ben Emmerson QC, a founder member of the Wicked Witch’s Matrix Chambers, who represented Abu Qatada.
The other candidate was a barrister who specialises in insolvency and pensions. This was at a time when the justice ministry was still being run by Euro-fanatic Ken Clarke.
His department couldn’t come up with a single candidate who had sat as a judge in Britain. You might have thought that judicial experience would be a basic requirement for anyone applying to work as a European judge.
Incredibly, it isn’t. Most of the ECHR’s 47 members are career bureaucrats like Mahoney, many of them from former totalitarian dictatorships which have little history of anything which could remotely be described as ‘justice’ or ‘human rights’.
Given that some of these countries were until fairly recently banging people up in gulags for ‘political crimes’, it makes you wonder why they’re now so keen on giving prisoners the vote.
Of course, this isn’t really about prisoners’ rights. It’s merely another example of a remote supra-national organisation imposing its will on formerly sovereign nations, just to show us who’s boss.
Although the ECHR is separate from the EU, it shares the fundamental belief that independent nations are at best irrelevant and at worst downright dangerous.
The idea that countries can be trusted to make their own laws is anathema to the Eurocrats. And never forget that the incorporation of the Human Rights Act into British law was Tony Blair’s self-proclaimed ‘proudest’ achievement.
Comedic: Richard Beckinsale (left) and Ronnie Barker (right) in their roles as Godber and Fletch in the classic TV comedy Porridge. If prisoners do get the vote politicians could be campaigning in jails before the next election
As a consequence we have lost control of everything from our borders to our criminal justice system. Labour and the Lib Dems love ‘Europe’ because it is a convenient way of saddling a reluctant British public with unpopular laws and ludicrous rules and regulations.
The Tories promised to withdraw from the European court and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, a plan which enjoys substantial support among voters.
Chris Grayling, Ken Clarke’s robust successor, would pull out of the ECHR in a heartbeat. But the realities of coalition mean that the Lib Dems won’t let him.
And if prisoners do get the vote, will we see politicians campaigning in jails at the next election? ‘Oi, Fletch, I’ve just heard that Nick Clegg’s canvassing at Slade this afternoon.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-2443214/Who-going-vote-Fletch-If-prisoners-vote-politicians-campaigning-jails-election.html#ixzz2gjdrXyuq Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook