Thursday 21 April 2011

Strasbourg in the Dock

Today I launched a new pamphlet with the think tank CIVITAS, Strasbourg in the Dock - Prisoner Voting, Human Rights & the Case for Democracy. The report assesses what Britain should do to change its human rights laws - at domestic and European level - in the aftermath of the prisoner voting ruling from Strasbourg.

Lib Dem peer and former statutory reviewer of counter-terrorism, Lord Carlile, kindly wrote the foreword. You can read the pamphlet here, and some of the reporting here and here.

This issue will not go away, and the report sets out some of the practical changes we can make within the parameters of coalition.

2 comments:

Richard Tebboth said...

Dom: this is surely part of the wider debate of what our position in Europe should be.
You have previously written -
'Britain has too much to lose economically by withdrawing from the EU.'
This may be one of those hypothetical questions so disliked by politicians - as at the 'Open Primary' - but ... is there any level of contribution which a Conservative government would find so 'unacceptable' (quote from George Osborne) as to precipitate withdrawal?
See also Danial Hannan
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100084588/the-proposed-eu-budget-hike-will-wipe-out-all-britains-spending-cuts/
See also:
Government says no to cost-benefit analysis of EU
http://www.tfa.net/the_freedom_association/2011/01/government-says-no-to-cost-benefit-analysis-of-eu.html
There is continuing debate in the cybersphere about a referendum to put the matter beyond party political (or coalition) constraints.

Richard Tebboth said...

And now..

'The European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1325398/Euro-court-outlaws-criticism-of-EU.html

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