The Home Secretary was not making it up- he did have a cat. She also may ‘know the stories about the Human Rights Act’ but stories alone are what they are.

The case concerning Maya the cat was judged in 2008 and then first misreported in 2009 thanks to the Sunday Telegraph despite the judiciary’s press office publicly denouncing the facts of the article. The uproar regarding Maya matters for a number of reasons not largely because of the huge constitutional importance regarding the future of the Human Rights Act but also the consistent failure of politicians including cabinet members and journalists to state the facts and get the basic law correct.

It would be extremely worrying if May really didn’t understand the law not only behind this specific case but also Article 8 itself and I don’t believe for one minute that she doesn’t. Surely it’s about time that misreporting of human rights cases stops. There have been numerous cases which have been reported inaccurately that may cause long term damage to our judicial system. Once the law is reported incorrectly it has a habit of spiralling off into oblivion and the facts rarely gravitate back down again.

The very fact that May used this case as one of her three examples for why the HRA ‘has to go’ demeans any logical argument concerning the abolition of the Act and replacing it with a Bill of Rights. The debate concerning the future of the HRA is one that needs to be had but as the Head of the Court of Appeal Lord Neuberger stated in a recent speech ‘debates must be based on facts not misconception deliberate or otherwise. Persuasion should be based on truth rather than propaganda’.

Not only were the facts behind this case so incorrectly reported but the example doesn’t have anything to do with human rights as the decision was largely based upon European free movement law as the man’s partner was European and so applied to him too. Thankfully the Justice Secretary stepped up to clear up the muddy facts and respected his political duty to get the facts right and not insult the intelligence of the British public. Leftist flag waver Clarke is not, however he has put himself at great risk of an early retirement and should be praised for getting the basic law right.  If May had addressed the issue that current human rights law is making deportations more difficult in a more intelligent manner this would have created much more intelligent debate without severely bruising herself and increasing strains within the cabinet.

Out of all the public gaffes Clarke has made this year, this is not one of them and certainly not something he should regret. He did however take a bold move in dismissing the concept of collective responsibility and the public unity of the cabinet. Perhaps in this green cabinet it is politically more acceptable for public divisions to emerge between ministers not just between the two parties but within them too. Maybe this will lead to a growing sense of political freedom within the cabinet which may not necessarily be a bad thing.

 

Filed under: clarepoliticsnews, conservatism, conservatives, europe, humanrights, ukpolitics on October 9th, 2011