SIR – Your leading article (March 1) rightly draws attention to the failure of our institutions to counter Islamic extremism.

However, it is legislation that has also failed. When I was shadow attorney general, I successfully pressed for the repeal of the Human Rights Act in the shadow cabinet and this remained policy until 2010. It was dropped because of the Coalition. We now see the results. As your leader states, the Government’s attempt to deport a leading member of an alQaeda affiliate and close friend of the Isil murderer Mohammed Emwazi came to nothing.

The situation has worsened since 2010 because the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is adjudicated by the European Court of Justice, and from which there is no appeal, is being brought into effect in one case after another. The European Scrutiny Committee issued a warning to the Government that we at Westminster must pass legislation overriding the Charter in our vital national interest, “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”. The Coalition Government has refused, with grave implications for dealing with terrorism.

On March 8 2005, I brought in a Westminster Prevention of Terrorism Bill to disapply the Human Rights Act with a clause ensuring the intrinsic rights of habeas corpus, due process and a fair trial for accused terrorists. This was ignored by both the Government and the opposition.

Tinkering with control orders and Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures are mere devices that do not deal with the human rights legislation itself. It is time Parliament woke up.

Sir William Cash MP (Con)

London SW1 SIR – We face a farcical situation. The Human Rights Act is being used to shelter individuals who are plotting to introduce a system that, if they got their way, would deny fundamental rights to everyone.

Christopher Carver

Yeovil, Somerset SIR – It would appear that the Sunday Telegraph has uncovered a wealth of facts about Mohammed Emwazi, previously known in the Western media as “Jihadi John”.

This – plus a lot more information – must surely have been already known to the security authorities. If this is so, why then did they not act before Mr Emwazi left the country?

Duncan Rayner

Sunningdale, Berkshire SIR – For a thousand years Britain has welcomed many people to our shores who wish to enjoy the quality of life here.

The job of the security services is not to prevent young people from emigrating to Syria. We have historically enjoyed freedom of movement here and such restrictions have never been part of our culture. Those over the age of 18 are surely free to leave, while younger people are the responsibility of their parents, not the state.

Instead of attempting to prevent our citizens from leaving the country, we should intercept any who have absorbed the culture of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and brought it back with them. We should then constrain them until they have convinced the authorities that they deserve to be reintegrated into the community.

Tony Jones

London SW7 SIR – The term “radicalisation” is being overused to account for why otherwise normal, welleducated men and women from good homes are signing up to commit murder and mayhem in the Middle East and beyond.

There was a time when it was thought that we take responsibility for our own decisions and actions- no longer so, it seems, in Western society.

Malcolm Boother

Dorking, Surrey SIR – Jassem Emwazi, father of Mohammed Emwazi, is more refreshingly candid and suitably condemnatory than the sum of dozens of dissembling interviews proffered by Asim Qureshi, research director of the advocacy group Cage.

Are we to be left wondering why?

Paul Harrison

Terling, Essex