A few quick thoughts now that the government want to blame "the lawyers" (and by extension the judges) for terrorism policy /1
First, I regularly hear (e.g. there is a Sun headline floating around) that the European Court of Human Rights have prevented the UK imposing "indeterminate" sentences, i.e. imprisonment for public protection. This is a myth. /2
It is correct to say that the European Court of Human Rights in a case called James v UK (followed by the UK Supreme Court) said that if we have IPP sentences there MUST be sufficient provision for rehabilitative courses so that prisoners weren't stuck forever /3
If the UK wanted indeterminate sentences again human rights law would not prevent this AS LONG AS sufficient resources were put into the system. But as we know the Conservative led government reduced the MoJ budget by around a half since 2010 so who is responsible? Not lawyers /4
Next, it wasn't human rights laws which got rid of control orders later known as TPIMS. Human rights law says you can't impose *disproportionate* restrictions on suspects but doesn't stop them being used. It is govt policy which has reduced these down /5
Also there was some talk on @BBCr4today about retrospective punishments, i.e. changing the law so that people *already convicted* will stay in prison longer. This is not possible under human rights law which prohibits retrospective punishment /6
Though this is a longstanding principle of the rule of law - and should not be controversial. It is a panic measure. There are other ways of dealing with prisoners leaving prison through surveillance without having to be draconian /7
Ultimately the elephant in the room, and the reason the govt wants to blame lawyers, is that the prison and courts budget has been cut by literal billions by Tory-led govts since 2010 and people who know the system have been screaming that it is broken /8
It should be obvious that you can't rehabilitate people if you don't provide the resources to do it, and that applies even more so for terrorists who have strong ideological reasons for carrying out offences /9
We should be very wary of people within the government using lawyers as a scapegoat for failings in anti-terrorism policies and laws they themselves decided *but also* using terrorist attacks as means too implement an anti-rule of law agenda e.g. diluting the Human Rights Act /10
I wrote this a couple of years ago but it is evergreen in a sense as we often respond to terrorism in very similar ways eachother.org.uk/how-we-respond… /11
For example, this is always the case eachother.org.uk/how-we-respond… 
