PM MAY RIP UP HUMAN RIGHTS LAWS
Ministers facing a legal minefield to push through controversial new terror measures
BORIS Johnson is refusing to rule out suspending human rights laws to bring in controversial new anti-terror measures.
A package of measures announced after Sudesh Amman’s Streatham attack is likely to face legal challenges on multiple fronts, including under the european Convention on human Rights.
The Prime Minister is facing a race against time to get emergency laws through Parliament within days, to prevent more terrorists winning automatic early release from prison.
At least half a dozen Islamist terrorists are thought to be due for imminent release – one possibly within weeks.
Last night government sources said they were confident they could get the emergency measures through before the first extremist was freed ‘at the back end of this month’.
But changing aspects of their sentences retrospectively could lead to legal action against the Government. And separate plans to impose indefinite prison sentence on terrorists who fail to reform, announced by ministers on Monday night, are also likely to face a legal challenge.
Amanda Pinto QC, chairman of the Bar Council, warned last night that ‘a knee-jerk reaction can have unintended consequences and any moves towards indefinite detention should be resisted’. She said the practice had been ‘prohibited as long ago as the Middle Ages’ and that previous attempts to introduce it had been ruled unlawful.
Downing Street has refused to rule out the rare step of derogating – or suspending – the european Convention in order to force legislation through. Any move to suspend human rights laws would cause a split in government.
While some senior figures, including the PM’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings, are said to be open to the idea, others, such as the Justice Secretary Robert Buckland are understood to have grave concerns.
A No 10 spokesman acknowledged that ministers were powerless to prevent terrorist prisoners being automatically freed until the new emergency law was passed. Asked if the Government would derogate from the eChR, the spokesman said: ‘We are going to ensure that we will bring forward the necessary legislation to protect the public because that’s the right thing to do.’
Civil liberties groups will almost certainly launch a legal challenge against the Government’s proposals. Last night one group described the ministers’ plans as ‘dangerous’.
And Labour’s Baroness Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general, said she had reservations about the Government’s plans. ‘I do not support changing people’s sentences but there is a grey area about what is the fundamental part of the sentence and what is the administration of the sentence and it’s really for the Government to construct that to make it defensible in the court,’ she told the BBC Radio Four Today programme.
Asked about the possibility of Britain derogating from human rights laws, Lord Carlile QC, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said: ‘It would be disappointing if the UK felt it necessary to enter into a dispute with the Council of europe over this. Derogation is an action of last resort.
‘There are other options open to the Government, one of which is the re-introduction of control orders or a beefed-up version of Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures or TPIMs.’
Control orders were introduced under 2005 anti-terrorism legislation. each order, signed by the home Secretary, put a terrorist suspect under close supervision similar to house arrest, with restrictions on internet use, who they met and where they were allowed to go.
Control orders were repealed and replaced by TPIMs in 2011, which the Government said was a less intrusive system to address concerns about civil liberties.
The only other time that Britain has derogated from the european Convention in recent times was in the aftermath of 9/11. Then, it was to allow indefinite detention without trial of international terror suspects at Belmarsh high-security prison in London. Derogation is allowed ‘in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation’.
Clare Collier, of civil rights group Liberty, said last night: ‘The Government’s response to recent terror attacks is a cause of increasing concern for our civil liberties.
‘It’s clear the UK’s counterterror system is in chaos and desperately needs proper scrutiny and review.’
‘An action of last resort’