Theresa May’s vow to rip up human rights laws to gain more powers against terror suspects is a “dangerous distraction” intended to deflect attention from her record over police cuts, the shadow Brexit secretary has said.
Sir Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, said that casting aside human rights protections “would be to give up the very values that those who carried out the recent atrocities want to attack”.
Writing for the Guardian, Starmer said the challenges that had emerged for police and the security services after the attacks in Manchester and London had more to do with resources than legal powers.
The need to improve the flow of intelligence to police and the security services “calls into question … whether cuts to policing – particularly neighbourhood and community policing – that May has overseen have made it harder to detect and monitor threats at an early stage”, he wrote.
“Emerging details that some of the terrorists involved in recent attacks had come to the attention of the authorities for a limited period suggests that it was not human rights laws, but rather resourcing challenges, that prevented the authorities from monitoring and following up on threats. That is where the focus of investigations should lie.”
May has come under intense pressure after the London and Manchester terror atrocities over cuts to policing and possible intelligence failures during her time as home secretary and prime minister.
In a last-minute intervention late on Tuesday, 36 hours before polls are due to open, the prime minister said she was looking at ways to increase government powers against extremists.
She said: “I can tell you a few of the things I mean by that: I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.
“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.
“And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”
Her comments suggest she wishes to attempt to strengthen terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims), and could involve further powers on curfews, restrictions on association and limits on access to communication devices, and an increase in the period for which terror suspects can be held, which currently stands at 14 days.
Starmer acknowledged that “whoever wins the general election will have to review our current security arrangements and look at what further support we can give to our security and intelligence services and to the police”. However, he said: “We have to do so with raw honesty about the problems we are facing – and without reaching kneejerk conclusions.”
In his five years as DPP, he said, “I saw many cases involving serious terrorist plots. Not once did human rights laws prevent the crown prosecution service from pursuing a prosecution, or from our dedicated counter-terrorist teams from monitoring and apprehending suspects.”
Complying with human rights law in a number of terrorism prosecutions had meant that there was no possibility of the cases being struck out as “unfair”, he said. “Rights compliance helps effective outcomes, it does not hinder them.”
