Bill Carmichael: What about the human rights of vulnerable children?

And there are few more vulnerable than innocent children at risk from manipulative and violent sexual predators.

I'm afraid that judging on this criteria, modern Britain comes well short of anything that can be described as civilised or decent – largely thanks to the pernicious influence of the Human Rights Act.

Take just two cases in the last few days – and this week is by no means exceptional in terms of the daft decisions inflicted on law-abiding people by left-wing activist judges.

First was the case of 48-year-old paedophile Zulfar Hussain, jailed for five years and eight months in 2007 for plying two 15-year-old girls, who were in care, with drink and drugs before having sex with them. It goes without saying, of course, that Hussain, despite committing what the trial judge described as a "truly shocking offence", has ended up serving absolutely nowhere near his ludicrously lenient full term.

In Britain's soft touch criminal justice system five years and eight months means in practice less than three years.

Even criminals convicted of the vilest sexual and violent offences rarely serve more than half of the sentence handed down.

So Hussain is coming to the end of his sentence, but at least we thought we would then be rid of him because his trial judge recommended he be deported to his native Pakistan at the end of his jail term.

Not so fast! Hussain appealed against the deportation order and an immigration tribunal ruled that to throw him out would infringe his human rights because he has a wife and child living in Blackburn.

Where do they find these people?

Of course there's no reason his wife and child could not join him in Pakistan if family life is so important to them.

And don't these judges ever consider the human rights of the victims – the children who will now be put at risk from Hussain's depravity?

The second case involves two paedophiles who won the right to challenge their inclusion on the sex offenders' register.

One, a teenager who raped a six-year-old boy, complained that having his name on the register stopped him travelling abroad on a family holiday.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that keeping the names of sex offenders on the register for life was "disproportionate" and – wait for it – an infringement of their human rights to family life.

As a result, thousands of criminals will now have the right to

challenge their inclusion on the sex offenders' register.

We now face the prospect of convening special panels that will have to decide if perverts have genuinely reformed. How exactly are they going to decide that?

One thing is certain – in a few years' time a sex offender will succeed in having his name removed from the register, and then will go on to commit another terrible crime.

But at least his human rights won't be infringed, and apparently that's all that matters.

THE European Parliament really showed it has its finger on the pulse of politics on the Continent this week.

The Parliament was meeting in Strasbourg and was due to vote on some routine policy proposals – but many MEPs couldn't get there because of the travel chaos caused by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.

So they decided to postpone the vote. The leaders of the main political groupings put their heads together to come up with an alternative date –and decided on May 6!

UKIP MEP John Bufton pointed out that many British members would not be able to attend because of the small matter of a General Election back

in Blighty.

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek – at the last count he is just one of four "Presidents of Europe" – said he would look into it.

That's all right then. But it makes you wonder, if MEPs can't arrange their own affairs with any degree of competency, what makes them think they can run the lives of 500 million people?