Human rights

Reasonable people would find it hard not to agree with the proposition that any dispute regarding citizens' rights and obligations should be determined by an independent and impartial body in accordance with the terms of the Human Rights Act (your report, 4 March).

However, when the advocate of these principles is a former High Court judge, "Lord" John McCluskey, one feels that double standards, if not downright hypocrisy, are being voiced.

As a member of the Faculty of Advocates for 50 years or so, he must have been aware that he was a member – practising and non-practising – of a body whose ethos and regulation is the very antithesis of independence and impartiality.

The one thing that any citizen who tries to establish their rights and obligations with the faculty will not get is a determination in accordance with the terms of Article 6 of the ECHR as incorporated into the Human Rights Act.

Hypocritical or what?

TOM MINOGUE

Victoria Terrace

Dunfermline