No place for Human Rights in the UK

As if in confirmation of the growing claim we in the UK no longer have a government , we learn even EU rulings (where inconvenient) are to be ignored. So, does this mean we’ve become ungovernable? Or is it more the case the death throes of Nu-Labour resemble the failure of Mussolini’s Fascist Dream, with those in power interested only in their own well being, blind to the writing on the wall and the terrible damage inflicted on the State by their self-interest and incompetence?

Does legality mean anything to this government? Certainly individual human rights can have no place in the Nu-Labour “manifesto”. But do they recognise the law as anything other than a tool for repression?

The Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne says: “It is not up to police forces to ignore court judgments because they or their masters do not like them.”

But, like it or not, he’s wrong. They will ignore judgments inconvenient to their ideology which appears to be one of total control.

A legal rebuke to this secrecy culture

Say what you will, the Law Lords have done the cause of freedom proud! Control orders drastically curtail the movement and freedom of association of suspects, people not convicted (or charged) of any offence. Now the Law Lords have found the system “legally flawed!”

“Ministers ought to face up to the fact that they can only deal with these terror suspects in two ways: either put them on trial or allow them to go free. The first option would be preferable. Assuming that the police and security services have not been utterly incompetent or corrupt, there is probably a case for treating these individuals as a potential threat to public safety.

The barrier to such prosecutions is the fact that phone-tap evidence – which we must presume provides the bulk of the case in such instances – is inadmissible in conventional courts.

The intelligence services claim that opening up such evidence to public scrutiny would expose the methods of the secret services and compromise their work. Yet this has not been the experience of the US, which has long allowed intercept evidence in its courts. And the opposition parties have signalled their willingness to accept safeguards in any legislation to maintain the privacy that the intelligence services need to do their job.”

See HERE.