Lord chief justice Lord Judge says UK courts not bound by rulings of Strasbourg-based court of human rights

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

British courts need not abide by the rulings of the European court of human rights, the most senior judge in England and Wales has said.

The lord chief justice Lord Judge said courts were not bound by the rulings of the Strasbourg-based court but should always take them into account.

Giving evidence to the Lords constitution committee, Judge said: "I would like to say that maybe Strasbourg shouldn't win and doesn't need to win.

"I myself think it's at least arguable that, having taken account of the decision of the court in Strasbourg, our courts are not bound by them.

"We have to give them due weight, and in most cases obviously we would follow them, but not I think necessarily."

But Lord Phillips, the president of the supreme court and a former lord chief justice, offered a different view to the peers: "In the end, Strasbourg is going to win so long as we have the Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Act is designed to give effect to that part of the rule of law which says we must comply with the convention.

"If we have Strasbourg saying, 'You can't do that', it raises some very real problems."

The prime minister has set up a commission to consider a British bill of rights after the government lost a legal challenge to the ECHR ruling that the UK's blanket ban on prisoners voting was unlawful.

Speaking in April, justice secretary Kenneth Clarke warned that the ECHR had been "rather too ready to substitute its own judgment for that of national courts".

It was failing to give enough weight to the domestic legal system and was not allowing for "genuine differences of national approach", he said.

The Strasbourg-based court has been criticised by some Tory MPs for assuming a legislative function beyond its powers.

But a move to withdraw Britain from the European convention would put the Conservatives at odds with their coalition partners. Lord McNally, the justice minister and a senior Liberal Democrat, has said he would resign from the government if it went ahead.