As expected, today’s report from the Commission on a Bill of Rights offered little. With a membership evenly split between Tory and Lib Dem nominees, it was set up to fail.
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who resigned from the Commission in March, tells me that this problem was exacerbated by the way in which it was run: it was barred from discussing either the European Court of Human Rights or the Convention. He says:
‘The Commission was not able to have a productive discussion because of the determination of the civil service to produce an artificial argument’.
Attention now moves to what the Conservatives will say about the matter in their manifesto. In a paper published as part of today’s report entitled ‘Unfinished Business’ (p182 onwards), Lord Faulks QC and Jonathan Fisher QC warn that the Strasbourg Court’s ‘judicially activist approach’ means ‘the notion of human rights has been devalued in the eyes of the public’. This
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