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The Times
September 21 2000

 

Ministers may defy rights Act over Hindley

BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL EDITOR

MINISTERS could insist that Myra Hindley serves out her days in jail even if she wins the right to early release under the Human Rights Act, which comes into force next month.

The Lord Chancellor made it clear yesterday that the Government was prepared to defy judges in certain cases in which the courts rule that laws are in breach of the Human Rights Act.

In a move to defuse fears that the Act, which comes into effect on October 2, involves a big shift in power away from Parliament, Lord Irvine of Lairg insisted that Parliament would retain the upper hand. There would be rare cases, he said, in which it would not amend laws to comply with a ruling.

Neither ministers nor Government were obliged to amend laws which judges declared were incompatible with the Act, Lord Irvine added. "I can envisage that in one or two cases they would take the view that there was some overriding reason why they would not want to make it [the law] compliant," he said.

It was still open for people to take their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. That takes up to five years, a delay the Act was designed to avoid.

David McIntosh, the Law Society vice-president, said: "It seems inconsistent to take the credit for bringing the convention [on human rights] into play but then to reserve their position ahead of any tangible need to so. It's a bit like joining a club and saying you won't be bound by the rules, and it raises the spectre that they have something already in mind."

Lord Irvine did not refer to specific cases and refused to pre-empt debate on the issue of mandatory life sentences. One of the most controversial challenges expected under the Act is that over the Home Secretary's power to set the jail terms and release dates of prisoners such as Hindley.

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