Letters: Reconsidering the Court’s value
[Re: Patel: UK’s Rwanda immigration policy is ‘legally compliant’, yesterday]
This week’s news, which saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) block a deportation of migrants to Rwanda, indicates an ECtHR that has rather overstepped its bounds.
We must be clear.
The sole role of the ECtHR is to adjudicate on important issues of principle. It is not to micromanage cases, many of which are highly complex and dependent on fact.
It is unsurprising that the Prime Minister is now taking stock of the UK’s relationship with the ECtHR.
And, in my view, the UK’s domestic court system, headed by the UK Supreme Court, is more than capable of performing the function of safeguarding human rights in the UK.
The value that the ECtHR brings to us is questionable at best and non-existent at worst.
In its intervention earlier this week, the ECtHR has frankly overplayed its hand and brought into question the appropriateness of the present arrangement. It is not the first time that the benefits of the ECtHR to the UK have been thrust under the spotlight, and it won’t be the last time either.
Jonathan Fisher QC, Red Lion Chambers