It's a
victory for civil liberties but it's a sad indictment of the state of affairs in this country, that but-for the intervention of the
Strasbourg court, we would certainly be living in an elected dictatorship. Stop-and-search powers, enacted under
Section 44 of the
Terrorism Act 2000, have been abused by British police, particularly in London. This case involved two people who were detained by police outside the
Defence Systems and Equipment International exhibition in
London Docklands in 2003. One of the claimants was detained for about twenty minutes as he was cycling to join a protest outside the arms fair. The other claimant, a journalist from London, had come to film the protests and was detained for what she felt was about thirty minutes, though police records claimed it was just five minutes. The Strasbourg court were not impressed and said the pair's rights under
Article 8 of the
European Convention on Human Rights (the right to respect for a private and family's life) had been violated. This was because stop-and-search powers were "not sufficiently circumscribed" and there were not "adequate legal safeguards against abuse". It also concluded that "the risks of the discriminatory use of the powers" were "a very real consideration". The pair were awarded £30,400 ($49,400) to cover legal costs.
Naturally the British government are disappointed with the result and the Home Secretary,
Alan Johnson, has said the government will appeal against the decision. The police are also disappointed and according to Chief Constable Craig Mackay of the
Associaion of Chief Police Officers, officers will continue using the powers while the appeal was pending. Though perhaps most disappointingly of all is the fact, as pointed out by Policing and Security Minister
David Hanson, that the government had won all previous challenges in the UK courts. This included a
High Court ruling in 2003, subsequently upheld by the
Court of Appeal and the
House of Lords, that the powers, and any consequent violation of human rights, was proportionate under the European Convention on Human Rights and justified in the light of the threat of terrorism. For the sake of the future of civil liberties in this country and a potential ejection out of the EU* (if the Eurosceptics had their way!), let's hope this was just a minor blip on the part of our highly esteemed and liberty-friendly judiciary.
* IMPORTANT NOTE: Many Brits often complain that decisions like these illustrate the deplorable extent to which the UK has had its powers usurped by the EU. But it is worth remembering that the
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in
Strasbourg that decided the above case, has absolutely no connection with the European Union. It is in fact an institution belonging to the
Council of Europe, of which the UK is a member along with forty-six other countries, including Russia, Armenia and Norway who are not members of the EU. The main court of the EU is the
European Court of Justice (ECJ) located in
Luxembourg. Its role is to decide on matters affecting
EU Law, (ie: disputes between Member States or involving other legal entities only within Member States). The
ECJ does not concern itself with human rights issues, which is the sole purview of the
ECtHR. I wonder how many people are actually aware of this.
