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UK to review human rights laws after sex ruling

17 February 2011 01:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Britain said on Wednesday it would review the way European human rights rules are interpreted in British law after Prime Minister David Cameron criticized a court ruling in favor of sexual offenders, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The government said it would reluctantly comply with a decision by Britain’s Supreme Court to give convicted rapists and pedophiles the right to ask for their name to be removed from a life-long register of sex offenders.
Cameron said the government would take the "minimum possible approach" to the Supreme Court decision, made last year after Britain’s top judges found provisions in the Sexual Offences Act incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
"I am appalled by the Supreme Court ruling, Cameron told parliament.
At present, sex offenders sentenced to more than 30 months in jail are put on the register for life, requiring them keep police notified where they live and if they go abroad. The Supreme Court ruled this breached their human rights.
Under the government’s proposed rules, offenders will be able to apply to be removed from the register after 15 years. Police will decide whether they present a continuing risk to the public.
The Supreme Court’s decision is the latest in a series of human rights rulings which have angered British politicians.
Last week lawmakers called on the government to defy an outstanding ruling to give prisoners the right to vote, made in 2005 by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in France.
Britain bars most prisoners from voting in elections and Cameron has said the idea of allowing convicts to vote makes him "physically ill."
Home Secretary Theresa May told parliament’s lower House of Commons that the government would shortly set up a commission to investigate the creation of a "British Bill of Rights."
"Most people in this house are fed up with the way that decisions taken by this house are increasingly being overturned by the courts ... we will be ensuring that we are able to take action to assert the rights of parliament," she said.
The scope of the government’s human rights commission remains unclear, as it will have to satisfy the competing demands of the coalition’s Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
Many of Cameron’s Conservatives want Britain to tear up the provisions of the European human rights convention, which the former Labour government incorporated into British law.
They say the convention takes power away from parliament and disregards the rights of victims of crime in favor of offenders. The Conservatives campaigned in last May’s national election to replace the convention with a British version.
But their pro-European Liberal Democrat partners in the coalition support the convention, potentially neutering the commission, which was promised by the two parties when they formed their governing alliance last May.