Now Mr Blunkett must take human rights more seriously

Being condemned for breaches of human rights is becoming something of an occupational hazard for this Government, and in particular its Home Secretary, David Blunkett. Last week Mr Blunkett found himself metaphorically hauled before the beaks at the European Court of Human Rights for allowing prison governors the power to increase prisoners' sentences.

Yesterday we were told that the emergency powers the Government took on after 11 September infringed the basic human rights of nine foreign terrorist suspects. According to the chairman of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the body set up by the government to oversee the operation of thenew law, the Anti-Terrorism Act, rushed through last December, is "not only discriminatory and so unlawful, but it is also disproportionate".

It all goes to show that "bringing human rights home" – the incorporation of the European Convention into British law – is not the inviolable bulwark against attacks on our civil liberties that we wished it to be. Indeed the Goverment found it all too easy to abrogate Article 5 when it rammed its bill through parliament. Foreign suspects, even those held for heinous crimes, have as much of a right to a free trial as any Briton, and that is an absolute right. Being held indefinitely without trial not only breaches the European Convention but the older principle of habeas corpus. Seven of the nine were held at Belmarsh prison for seven months without any legal process whatsoever. That was plainly wrong, as is the continuing detention of hundreds of people in much worse conditions at Guantanamo Bay.

All that said, the Government's instinct to deal with the threat of terrorism is entirely and obviously justified by the scale of the challenge revealed on 11 September. The security services, for example, should be allowed to do their work, provided there is a proper democratic oversight of their activities. Some human rights conflict with each other in any case, and we have to accept that the right to life will take precedence over, say, the right to privacy. The place to examine and justify those difficult decisions is in court, but without access to due process of law there is no possibility of that. And that is where the British Government got things wrong.