A 'human right' to father a child behind bars; even Ken Clarke might now see the case for withdrawing from the European Convention

By Daniel Hannan

Do you imagine for a moment that Ken Clarke deliberately granted a convicted prisoner the right to father a child from behind bars? I mean, I know the old bruiser has come in for a lot of criticism recently – some of it very unfair – but he’s enough of a politician to understand how that decision would look to the rest of us. Indeed, I can’t imagine any elected representative authorising such a request. So how the Devil did it happen?

The answer, tells us a great deal about how Britain is governed. The decision was apparently approved on grounds that the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees our “right to a family life”. Some officials at the justice ministry evidently took this to mean that convicts must be allowed access to artificial insemination – paid for, through the NHS, by everyone else. It is just conceivable that ministerial approval was sought, as in some episode of Yes, Minister, by slipping the relevant document into the bottom of someone’s red box. But the decision will surely have originated with officials, not politicians.

The Direct Democracy movement has suggested a number of ways to shift power from judges and civil servants to voters and their representatives. Yet it is surely now becoming clear that the first step must be to repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention. Perhaps even Ken Clarke might now be coming round to the idea.


(2011-6-2/The Telegraph)