2008) the Grand Chamber cited the approach of the House of Lords in Pinochet. Thus UK courts can and do give a successful lead to Strasbourg.
In November 2009, the then Shadow Lord Chancellor Michael Howard MP claimed that the Human Rights Act, ‘requires our courts to apply the European Convention on Human Rights in every decision they make’.93 Similarly, when he was shadow Justice Secretary, Dominic Grieve MP suggested that the ‘marked deference’ shown by British judges towards Strasbourg decisions under the HRA was problematic, and indicated that a Conservative government would, among other things::94
reword it to emphasise the leeway of our national courts to have regard to our own national jurisprudence and traditions and to other common law precedents while still acknowledging the relevance of Strasbourg Court decisions.
The UK courts are not bound by rulings of the Strasbourg Court and they are perfectly entitled to invite Strasbourg to clarify its reasoning and to think again, if they believe there is good reason to do so. Indeed they have already done so on a number of occasions.
93
‘We must replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights’, Conservative Party blog, 22 November 2009. Similar inaccuracies appear in the Denning Lecture given by Sir Malcolm Rifkind QC MP (‘Governed by Law or by Lawyers? International Treaties and Human Rights’, 28 October 2009), see esp pp16-17 where he refers to the UK courts’ ‘lack of flexibility’ under the HRA. 94
‘Can the Bill of Rights do better than the Human Rights Act?’, Middle Temple Hall, 30 November 2009, p9.
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