Wrong rights

While the Conservatives may have gone too far in proposing to repeal the whole Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court, Allan Massie (Perspective, 2 October) also exaggerates in asking: “Could any liberal Tory vote for a party that proclaimed its indifference to human rights?”

No mainstream party could be “indifferent” to such an issue.

But I would be surprised if there are not many “liberals” in all parties who would consider it a long overdue extension of the human rights of the great majority of UK citizens, if the ludicrously wide interpretations of “the right to family life” and many other decisions by our immigration judges, were to be narrowed significantly to reflect the intent of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe and the others who drafted the convention more than 60 years ago to prevent a repeat of the violations of the 1930s and 1940s and to respond to Stalin’s subversion of western Europe after his forced takeover of the east.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews