It added that it would be 'inconceivable' for Britain to pull out of ECHR

Tory plans to strip European judges of their power to enforce human rights in Britain have been point-blank rejected by Strasbourg today.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said a future Conservative government would pull Britain out of the European Court of Human Rights if it did not accept that Parliament had the final say on UK law.

But the Council of Europe – the continent's top human rights body – said the proposals were 'not consistent' with the European Court of Human Rights.

It added that it was 'inconceivable that the UK as a human rights leader and founding country of this organisation would leave.'

The remarks leaves British membership of the Strasbourg court hanging by a thread.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said Britain should not be bound by European court rulings

It comes amid a growing row over Mr Grayling's radical proposals, announced today following this week's Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who was removed at the last reshuffle, said the proposals were 'almost puerile'. He added: 'I also think they are unworkable and will damage the UK's international reputation.'

Mr Grieve said the plan contained a series of factual 'howlers' and were not properly thought through.

Mr Grayling also came under fire from his own Liberal Democrat colleague Simon Hughes, the justice minister, who accused him of playing politics with the issue because of the rise of UKIP.

Mr Hughes said: 'The Conservatives don't care about the rights of British citizens, they care about losing to Ukip. These plans make no sense – you can't protect the human rights of Brits and pull out of the system that protects them.'

Under Mr Grayling's blueprint, a future Conservative government would issue an ultimatum to Strasbourg that it must accept being merely an 'advisory body' to British courts - or face the UK withdrawing from the system altogether.

The party would scrap the Human Rights Act introduced by Labour in 1998 to enshrine the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law.

Instead there would be a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, which would include the principles from the convention, which was originally drawn up by British lawyers after the Second World War.

That legislation would make clear that the judges of the Supreme Court were not obliged to take European Court of Human Rights' rulings into account when coming to decisions.

Mr Grayling said that if the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe refused to accept the new arrangements, Britain would simply leave the convention.

He said critics of his plan were ‘just plain wrong’, adding: ‘What we’re doing is going back to a convention that we’re part of, to our partners in that convention and saying “Look, this doesn’t work for us anymore”.’

The Justice Secretary added: ‘I think the public of this country are frustrated with the way human rights laws have evolved.’

He said the Strasbourg court had a ‘blank cheque to go where it wants with human rights laws’, adding: ‘Our parliament can do nothing about it.’

Mr Grayling said the Government was ‘absolutely prepared’ to pull Britain out of the court - adding that he had consulted on his plans with the current attorney-general, Jeremy Wright, who had considered them 'fine, viable and legal'.

The European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg enforces the convention on human rights set up after the Second World War and signed by a almost all European countries. It is separate to the EU

But the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable, speaking on a visit to Edinburgh, said: ‘It's a very retrograde step.

‘We do value human rights in our society - it's what our democracy is all about - and we also value a system of law in which judges rather than politicians make the final decisions, and it's very important that we retain that core and that framework.

‘We would see a gradual decline in the credibility of our legal system because, essentially, in order to score cheap populist points, the legal system is being undermined and judges are being undermined.’

Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry accepted that the European Court of Human Rights was not perfect but insisted Britain could not ‘pick and choose’ the laws it wanted to abide by.

She told BBC Radio 4's World At One: ‘In the end, if we sign up to the convention, we sign up to the convention.

‘If we want to amend the convention in the way the Tories want to then I'm quite sure that Armenia and Ukraine and Russia would be very happy to do so.

‘But I think the rest of civilised Europe would be outraged and simply wouldn't allow us to ... which I think would then mean that we would need to withdraw.’

She accused the Conservatives of going ‘far too far’ and suggested it was a ‘backdoor way’ of trying to leave Europe.

Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve said leaving the European Court of Human Rights would damage Britain's international reputation

Instead she called for judges to be improved and for the reduction of the backlog of cases at the European Court.

But Justice Minister Lord Faulks, who is responsible for human rights in the justice department, defended the plans, saying they would bring human rights back to UK.

He added: ‘We are reasserting the sovereignty of Parliament.

‘We are not giving any comfort to dictators. We have a very proud history of protecting human rights in this country.

‘I have rather more faith in Parliament and our Supreme Court than some people seem to do.

‘The very rights that are contained in the convention are going to be replicated in our British Bill.

‘We would like to remain a party to the convention but we want ultimately to have the right to override the decision in those rare circumstances where we think the Strasbourg court gets it wrong.’

He insisted that the Tories were not playing electoral politics, saying that discontent had existed for a long time. The barrister also said he had personally seen the problems the Human Rights Act causes ‘every day’ in the domestic courts.