Human rights v democracy?

Human rights law is eroding democracy, according to centre-right think tank Policy Exchange.

Sir Noel Malcolm, Policy Exchange senior advisor, takes aim at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) this week in a study, ‘Human Rights and Political Wrongs: A new approach to Human Rights law’. He asserts that the ECtHR: fails to provide certainty and predictability; goes beyond the original scope of the European Convention; and has required the government to give some prisoners the vote despite MPs voting against this. He calls on the government to leave the ECtHR, replace the Human Rights Act and find new ways to protect the individual from the state.

However, Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC, consultant at Bindmans, pointed out Sir Noel had been unable to find more than a handful of cases to back his argument. He said: ‘For all its scholarship, it is essentially a propagandist document in line with the isolationist viewpoint of others who seek withdrawal from European institutions.’