Letter: Integration compromises our sovereignty

Your legal expert Mr Paul McBride (Perspective, 2 February) says that the UK won't be quitting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

We should ask, in exasperated rhetoric: "Why not?"

As a sovereign nation whose lawyers largely framed its articles, after the Second World War, to prevent Nazi-style abuses of law by possible future totalitarian states in Europe, we now see obvious distortions of that valid purpose by money-grubbing legal "cowboys" and undeserving criminals.

The claims for compensation regarding perceived prison discomforts and such consequences of loss of liberty as denial of the vote seem to have no sense, as far as most law-abiding people will believe here.

It is said that many of the higher court jurists in Europe hail from nations whose legal standards and traditions are very different and, in some instances, inferior to our own.

Therefore, perhaps to subserve notions of European integration, we bow to them, even in the face of perceived perversions of the real, original purposes of the ECHR.

As citizens of a supposedly sovereign nation, most people here will believe we should not hand over such internal responsibilities as the custodial management of criminals to some supranational, unelected foreign body.

Our UK government, now clearly heading for extreme electoral unpopularity, should earn some positive voter reactions by repatriating these legal matters - and pronto.

It at least owes us explanations for its policies, as in so many other aspects just now.

This silence is costing it future votes and, probably, the next general election.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop

Viewlands Road West

Perth

It is not strictly correct to claim EU laws make the UK in particular a haven for terrorists (your report, 4 February).

If the actual EU laws were to blame, then all EU countries would be equally at risk.

The problem, as with so many EU laws, is the way that Britain applies them.

IAIN CAMPBELL

Pentland Terrace

Edinburgh