Thursday’s debate on the backbench motion on prisoner voting tabled by Jack Straw
and David Davis is set to be a real parliamentary event – a rare occasion where the will of the elected legislature might just make a big difference. The real news will not be how many
endorse the ban, but which MPs – aside from those abstaining Government Ministers and Denis MacShane – choose to bow to Strasbourg.
MPs preparing to speak out against Strasbourg are now armed with a powerful academic case. A new Policy Exchange report authored by the political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky – Bringing Rights Back Home – outlines how the UK can address the growing problem of conflicts between judges and politicians in human rights cases.
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It argues that the senior judiciary, both within the United Kingdom and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, has unduly expanded the concept of “rights” to the point where their verdicts now often undermine parliamentary democracy and risk debasing the very concept of human rights.
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