Human rights law can lead to human wrongs

Hardly a day goes by without a further unwelcome incursion into Scots Law of the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR. In the latest ECHR-related development, almost 900 suspected criminals have walked free after prosecutors were forced to drop charges. Among the cases that will not face trial are rapes, sexual crime, robbery and assault, and possession of firearms.

According to the Crown Office, the cases have been dropped because of the so-called Cadder ruling, named after Peter Cadder from Glasgow, who won the right to appeal at the Supreme Court in London against convictions for two assaults and a breach of the peace, because the evidence he gave in an interview to police without a lawyer present is inadmissible in a criminal court under the ECHR.

Those legislators - and they include Labour, Liberal Democrat and Nationalist politicians - who supported the incorporation of this framework into Scots, and subsequently English Law too, must now be wondering why they did so. Whilst the concept of fundamental rights for all, even those accused on the most heinous of crimes, is a sound one, the fact that, for example, Rape Crisis Scotland says the law could make serious sexual offences almost unprosecutable is of deep concern.

If the ECHR has this effect, and it already being used to give prisoners votes, something most ordinary Scots would oppose, it is clearly bad law. As we have argued before, it must be significantly amended or consideration given to removing it from the statute book.