Ibrahim Mohammed - December 2010

My email inbox has been filled with the outrage of constituents over the failure to deport the asylum seeker Mohammed Ibrahim who killed a 12 year old girl in a hit and run accident when driving without a licence. Ibrahim has since had a child of his own so the court ruled that his human rights, in particular his right to a family life, would be breached if he were deported to Iraq.

The introduction of these Human Rights into English law is quite alien to our history and institutions. Our own Bill of Rights passed in Parliament in 1689 was the statutory expression of the Petition of Right presented to William and Mary as the condition of their taking the throne following the Glorious Revolution that deposed the tyrant James II.  It defines the limits of royal power and the need for regular parliamentary elections. Unlike the Human Rights Act 1998 it does not give any scope to broad judicial interpretation of general principles

The introduction of general principles of human rights into our law was a consequence of the treaty obligations that we imposed on the rest of Europe, and accepted ourselves, when we negotiated the European Convention on Human Rights at the end of the Second World War. It was an attempt to prevent the return of the tyranny to which so much of Europe had been subjected. To secure their rights under the Convention a British subject had to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. However, in 1998 the Labour government’s Human Rights Act made the general principles set out in the Convention supreme in our own courts. It is the interpretation and the operation of these principles that so outrage the public sense of justice. They take no account of any obligations of the individual, only his rights, and they take no account of the rights of the community. Ordinarily Ibrahim would have been deported for his offence but his right to a family life has been interpreted as a right to remain here whatever our own outraged sense of justice might demand.

The proper remedy is to remove this power of judges to consider and interpret an offender’s Human Rights in our courts. To do this we will need to repeal the Human Rights Act. The Conservative Manifesto at the last election promised to do this. To prevent the offender appealing the decision of a British court to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg however, will require us to withdraw from the Convention that we signed up to in 1945.

The Coalition Agreement states that the operation of the Human Rights Act will be reviewed in the lifetime of this current government. I suggest that we get on with it quickly. Until we do so politicians, and not the courts, will continue to be at the receiving end of the public’s quite proper indignation and frustration.