Peers back EU rights charter ‘for murderers’

PEERS last night voted to adopt an EU human rights charter that would have prevented the prosecution of the Stephen Lawrence killers.

Ministers suffered defeat for the the second time in a week as the House of Lords voted to put the charter into domestic law after Brexit.

Ten Tory peers voted with Labour and Lib Dems against the Government, including former deputy PM Lord Heseltine and former ministers Lord Patten of Barnes, Lord Willetts and Lord Deben.

But Lord Judge, the former lord chief justice, said article 50 of the charter would have prevented the prosecution of two killers of Stephen. Gary Dobson and David Norris were convicted after the rule of double jeopardy – that ensured no one could be tried for the same crime twice – was overturned. Lord Judge

said: ‘Article 50 prohibits that provision. The result would have been that two men now serving imprisonment following conviction for murder of that innocent boy would never have been prosecuted to conviction.’

Signed by Tony Blair in 2000, the charter contains 50 human rights. It was incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, enabling the European Court of Justice to take it into account when making judgments.

Proposing the amendment, independent crossbencher Lord Pannick warned that exclusion of its rights for the child, the elderly and the disabled, among others, was ‘unprincipled and unjustified’.

Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp yesterday said Brexit made ‘no sense at all’.

Calling for a second referendum, he claimed it ‘was not something people should decide in a moment’. ‘The EU is not perfect but it was the best idea we had,’ the 50-year-old German told the Guardian.

‘Unprincipled and unjustified’