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Courtesy of the Telegraph.
Britain will be bound by European human rights laws for another five years, with the Conservatives expected to abandon a pledge to withdraw the UK from the ECHR.
Theresa May is expected to make no mention in the Tory election manifesto of pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mrs May, who served as home secretary from 2010 to 2016, said last year she wanted to quit the ECHR, which for a time frustrated her plans to extradite the hate preacher Abu Qatada.
She was expected to write the commitment into the Conservative manifesto meaning that Britain would be committed to withdrawing by the end of the next parliament, in 2022.
It means that Britain is now likely to be bound by European human rights laws for at least another five years.
Tony Blair’s Labour Government wrote the legislation into British law in 1999 in the Human Rights Act.
Tory Eurosceptics have bitterly criticised the law because it gave judges in Strasbourg the ability to rule in Britain on issues such as a right to privacy and family life.
Mrs May’s predecessor David Cameron had pledged to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, but remain a signatory to the ECHR.
Last year Mrs May went further, saying the ECHR “can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals, and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights”.
It later emerged that she backed plans to “lift and shift” human rights enshrined in the European Convention and write them into UK law.
The party’s manifesto – which is due to be published in the week starting May 8 – was “locked” in terms of new ideas by aides to Mrs May at 10pm on Tuesday this week.
One senior minister said: “We have so much on our plate that we just don’t have enough time to do this. We have enough to do with Brexit let alone the ECHR.”
A Cabinet minister said he feared trying to withdraw from the ECHR would “screw up” negotiations with the European Union when Britain is trying to appear positive about the EU as the UK leaves.
A second Cabinet minister questioned why Mrs May would risk include the commitment when she wanted a clear five years to ensure a smooth Brexit.
But another party source said the situation was “fluid at the moment, different people have different views on it” and that no final decisions had been taken.
Iain Duncan Smith, a Eurosceptic former Cabinet minister, said the news that the commitment might not be in the manifesto was “disappointing” but he understood Mrs May’s thinking.
He said: “We have such a lot on our plates with the exit from the European Union. I would not be at all surprised because they need to keep the ship steady as we head to Brexit.
Martin Howe QC, a senior Tory lawyer who drew up the plans for Mr Cameron, said he “fully understood why Brexit must be put first” but urged Mrs May to include a reference to withdrawing from the ECHR.
He said: “They would be well advised to at least keep the option open of reforming human rights law and possibly withdrawing from the convention if that proves to be necessary.”
Five months ago, Jeremy Wright, the Attorney General, told MPs that the Government had “no quarrel with the content of the European Convention on Human Rights” but only the way it was applied.
Mr Wright said that while “the Government are certainly committed to seeking to do something about that” ministers “have a few other things on our plate at the moment”.
A Conservative Party spokesman declined to comment.