“Repel” against the European Court of Human Rights, urge the ministers
Ministers should fight European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings as they are advisory and “non-binding”, said Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary.
Nearly 70 Tory MPs have backed a bill this week, it would have forced Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, to ignore Strasbourg decisions on the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The Asylum Seekers (Deportation to Safe Countries) Bill – which was introduced by Jonathan Gullis, the Tory MP – was defeated by 188 votes to 69 after opposition parties and a handful of Tories voted against.
He had also been supported by Boris Johnson, the former prime ministeralthough he did not vote because he was abroad.
However, in an interview with Chopper’s Politics podcast on Friday, Sir Robert said ministers should use the courts to ‘push back’ against the judgments of Strasbourg.
This was preferable to withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, which is enforced by the ECHR tribunal in Strasbourg, as some Conservative MPs had argued.
“The judgments of Strasbourg are advisory”
Sir Robert said: “What the hell are we talking about here? We wrote the convention. British Conservative lawyers wrote it.
“I think this is presented as a massive red herring with everyone. Please focus on the facts.
“When we look at all this, we realize that the judgments of Strasbourg are advisory. They are not binding.
“We are perfectly free and we have arguments with the European Court all the time.”
He said the UK had won a debate over whether or not serious murderers should serve all their prison sentences under the life tariff.
“We won that,” he said. “The UK courts pushed back. There was a clear ruling that everyone accepted that we could indeed adopt lifetime tariffs so that life means life.”