Former home secretary Jack Straw has said the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has abandoned its legal 'land grab' and shown an 'outbreak of common sense' by backing down on prisoner voting rights. In a speech at a Thomson Reuters Legal debate in London, Straw opposed a motion that the ECHR was undermining democracy, marking a shift from his previous criticism of the court's 'ever-widening' judicial reach.
Straw, who steered the Human Rights Act through parliament, had been an arch-critic of the ECHR's 2004 judgment granting some prisoners the right to vote. He said the standoff over prisoner votes had been the main justification for the Conservative government's manifesto pledge to downgrade ECHR rulings to merely 'advisory' and make the UK's Supreme Court supreme in all judicial matters.
Straw noted that attitudes in Strasbourg had shifted after the House of Commons refused to change the law on prisoner votes. 'Aided by the retirement of the previous president of the court, Sir Nicholas Bratza, a Brit who had become more Catholic than the pope, wiser heads in Strasbourg have recognised that their court needs to stick to its core business of basic human rights,' he said.
The ECHR has now refused to order compensation for British prisoners, effectively kicking the issue 'into the long grass from where it will never be retrieved', Straw added. He also noted that higher British courts now only 'take account' of Strasbourg jurisprudence and do not necessarily follow it.
Straw concluded that the Council of Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the court have 'unquestionably been a force for good' and have helped nurture democracy across Europe. His renewed support for a more cautious Strasbourg court deprives the Conservatives of potential cross-party support for repealing the Human Rights Act.
