Tories to call for looser relationship with ECHR at next election if prime minister's reform plan fails
Share 13
inShare3
Email 
David Cameron will seek to distance Britain from the European Court of Human Rights if his reforms fail. Photograph: Alistair Grant/REUTERS
The last time David Cameron embarked on a European adventure he had little idea of the endgame.
The prime minister genuinely thought at last month's EU summit there was an outside chance fellow leaders would agree to the special privileges he was asking to protect the City. France and Germany famously said no, prompting the prime minister to wield the British veto to prevent them from embedding the new fiscal compact for the eurozone in the EU's Lisbon Treaty.
On his first European outing of the New Year, the prime minister has a far better idea of the endgame. He knows that his speech in Strasbourg today to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, in which he will call for the European court of human rights to concentrate on serious abuses of human rights, will lead to little change.
There is one very simple reason for this. Russia and Ukraine, which are members of the 47-strong Council of Europe, will not agree to reforms that would place even more focus on their human rights records.
The prime minister, who is speaking as part of Britain's six month presidency of the Council of Europe, will outline a series of reforms to streamline the work of the court which enforces the European Convention on Human Rights. Cameron will call for greater "filtering" to allow the court to clear a backlog of 150,000 cases. He will say that decisions should be made more quickly on the admissibility of cases – 97% of UK cases between 1959 and 2010 were deemed inadmissible. He will also say the court should cut down on "repetitive" cases – identical complaints from member states on, for example, a delay in seeking judicial redress.
But the prime minister is far too diplomatic to say what he really thinks. This is that the court should stop wasting time with cases from countries with strong records on human rights and respected legal systems – Britain, France and Germany, to name just three. The court should instead focus on member states which fail on those counts – Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, to name another three.
Britain has a string of examples to illustrate its point. These include the ruling against Ukraine over the ill treatment of prisoners in "training exercises" by special forces. Russia was judged to be on breach over the persecution of the children of Chechen dissidents.
This is why Cameron was so angry last week when the ECHR blocked the deportation to Jordan of Abu Qatada. The court should focus on what Britain calls "egregious" examples of human rights abuses in Council of Europe member states, goes the thinking.
The prime minister will say his airfare to Strasbourg is not a complete waste of taxpayers' money. The odd technical change may be made to the workings of the court. Cameron will say that Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary who is one of the cabinet's biggest defenders of the Strasbourg court, will take charge of drawing up a ministerial declaration by all 47 members of the Council of Europe in April. Clarke may secure the declaration. But it is highly unlikely that the next stage will be reached – amending the procedures of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The real advantage for the prime minister will be a political one back home. Britain has set an informal deadline of the first half of 2014 for agreement on the reforms. This is ostensibly because that is when Austria, a strong ally, will hold the presidency of the Council of Europe. (Azerbaijan is next on the list and is not exactly seen as a member of the reformist camp.)
But the real reason for focusing on 2014 is the British general election that will take place the following year. If no agreement is reached by 2014 Cameron will be able to say that he tried his hardest but it is impossible to reform the ECHR.
This will mean that the Tories could go into the 2015 election with one of
two manifesto pledges:
• The nuclear option of withdrawing, possibly on a temporary basis, from the ECHR. Downing Street sources hinted at this option in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend. But it is difficut to see how Cameron could do this. Nigel Farage pointed out today that Britain is locked into the Council of Europe and its institutions through it membership of the EU. A country cannot be a member of the EU unless it is a member of the separate Council of Europe.
Withdrawing from the court would probably prompt Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, to resign. He told MPs in February last year that the government would be behaving "tyranically" if it failed to enforce rulings by the court. Grieve is no softie. He made his remarks in a commons debate in which MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of a blanket ban preventing prisoners from voting. The court declared that the ban breached prisoners' human rights. While Grieve believes Britain is bound by treaty to respect the judgments of the court, he does not shy away from expressing criticism of the court. In November last year Grieve told the ECHR that national parliaments, and not judges, should decide whether prisoners are entitled to vote.
• A milder option of remaining in the ECHR but scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a British bill of rights. This was in the Tory manifesto for the last election. The Liberal Democrats blocked this in the coalition agreement and agreed instead to establish a commission to examine the case for a British Bill of Rights. The commission, whose membership is carefully balanced, is said to be working well. But they are struggling to reach agreement, if only because it is fiendishly complicated to incorporate the separate political and legal system of Scotland into the bill. This does not preclude the Tories, who have appointed their own commission, from making a pledge in their election manifesto to scrap the Human Rights Act.
Britain will work hard over the next few months to launch its reforms in Strasbourg. Some progress may be made. But in the end little will change, giving the prime minister little choice but to make some clear pledges in the Tory manifesto for the next election if he is to keep eurosceptics at bay.