Philip Davies: Injustice at the European court of human wrongs

Taxpayers in this country have had to fork out millions of pounds in compensation and costs to, in some cases, very unsavoury characters who have taken their cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The answer to a recent Parliamentary question I tabled revealed that we, as a country, have lost a staggering 202 cases in the last decade and a half.

Unbelievably, our contribution to the Council of Europe which, in turn, funds the European Court of Human Rights is set at 32,042,886 euros (about £27m) in 2013.

This is all on top of the Human Rights Act which incorporated the Convention rights into British law and which means that unelected judges in this country are 
making decisions on a regular basis with so-called “human rights” implications against the wishes of the elected House of Commons.

Many of the cases taken to the European Court of Human Rights – which we also have to pay to defend – relate to illegal immigrants, terrorists and convicted criminals.

In most cases, I find it very 
hard to see why they should be entitled to even one penny of our money.

The human rights bandwagon, with its army of human rights lawyers, is particularly odious when it appears to put the rights of convicted criminals above those of the victims in our justice system. Following on from earlier interfering verdicts relating to prisoners – including the decision about a prisoner’s right to vote – we have recently had another perverse decision about life imprisonment.

When the death penalty was abolished, assurances were given that anyone committing murder would serve the rest of their life in prison as an alternative to hanging.

However, in a recent case, the pseudo-judges at the European Court of Human Rights (who in many cases are not real judges but political appointees) have determined that a whole of life sentence is incompatible with a criminal’s “human rights”.

The court said that for a life sentence to remain compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights there had to be both a possibility of release and a possibility of review. Apparently the prospect of no release is inhuman – even for multiple killers. Yet what about the victims whose lives were taken by these evil criminals – or their families who have no release from their life sentences?

As a direct result of this decision, judges in this country now appear to be refusing to give whole of life sentences on the basis that they are deemed “illegal” under the European Convention. For example, a High Court Judge, Mr Justice Sweeney, recently sentenced a triple killer saying: “The implementation of a whole life order within the current legislative framework in this country is in breach at the time of passing of sentence of Article Three of the European Convention. It is not appropriate to impose a whole life term.”

When the convention was drawn up, following real human rights atrocities, I doubt that this article would have been considered appropriately applied to serial killers.

I think it is absolutely scandalous that the Convention can be used in this way.

From my discussions with my constituents in Shipley, I know that many of them feel strongly about this too – regardless of how they vote. These are the sort of cases and decisions which offend commonsensical, law abiding, hard working British people.

I think it is the human right of every innocent person in this country to be protected from killers and other criminals – not the other way around. The court in Strasbourg seems to be looking at the issue from the wrong end of the telescope.

The rights of criminals convicted of terrible crimes should never be a priority – our only concern should be for their victims and possible future victims.

As I have said many times, we need to scrap the Human Rights Act and remove ourselves from the European Convention of Human Rights.

It will come as no surprise, therefore, that I am delighted to be supporting a Bill currently before Parliament entitled “Withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights and Removal of Alleged Terrorists Bill”. However, this Bill is unlikely to become law at the moment, which is a great pity.

We, in this country, do not need lectures on real human rights and if the killers, terrorists and people trying to abuse our country and its tradition of fairness do not like it – as far as I am concerned, that is just tough.

* Philip Davies is the Conservative MP for Shipley.