Once again, the government is waving its fists at human rights law. Yet this frantic windmilling obscures the fact that its proposals won’t hit the intended target. Worse, they threaten to damage instead an even more valuable one.
In an interview at the weekend Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, revealed that he was examining how to curtail the influence on British judges of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Institutions such as the police and health service should not be “dictated to”, he said, and it was “wrong” that the court should rule on matters relating to British soldiers fighting overseas. It wasn’t Strasbourg that should have the last word in such cases but the UK Supreme Court.
We don’t yet know exactly
