IT is good news that Government ministers are openly discussing leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
This document was written for a different age, just after the Second World War, in response to the genocidal behaviour of the Nazis.
The original backers of the ECHR, which included Winston Churchill, never intended it would end up curtailing the sovereignty of independent democracies like the UK, giving judges in Strasbourg the power to overrule laws made in Parliament and policy set by our own elected ministers.
But that’s what has happened – especially since Tony Blair incorporated the ECHR into British law with his 1998 Human Rights Act.
Last week lawyers working for the left-wing activist group Care4Calais persuaded a judge to halt the transfer of 20 illegal migrants to the barge Bibby Stockholm.