It is long overdue that the whole UK distances itself from ECHR

With regard to the letter from Kevin Hanratty, Director of Human Rights Consortium (‘People want rights protections, as should this paper,’ April 6, see link below), to the News Letter editorial of last Tuesday (‘London should not exclude NI in retreat from rights laws,’ April 5, see link below)

Mr Hanratty’s response comes across to me as quite arrogant.

He says that the News Letter should agree with him to keep aligned to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

I believe this view does not represent the vast majority of News Letter readers and would go much further than the majority of unionist people.

I agree with the editorial that it is long overdue that the UK distanced itself from the ECHR and Northern Ireland must be included in that distancing.

Where Mr Hanratty gets his figures from that 80% plus of people in Northern Ireland agree with a separate bill of rights for Northern Ireland, I do not know.

Is he taking the figures from those who responded to a consultation?

Is it surveys? I am wary of surveys that often ask leading questions and produce findings which purport to show support for particular policies.

We should follow a UK-wide human rights bill and ignore lobbying from a range of voices on the issue.

Some of the people who talk most relentlessly about right are Sinn Fein/IRA politicians, who defend the rights abusers who engaged in republican violence.

Although the ECHR is apart from the EU, I believe that the majority of those who voted for Brexit also wanted to leave the ECHR.

We have seen some of the crazy decisions that have been taken in the past like convicted foreign criminals who have impregnated a woman and have used it to avoid deportation, claiming a right to family life.

How many terrorists have taken cases to ECHR to bypass UK rulings?

Northern Ireland should be linked completely to UK courts that should be able to overrule the European Court of Human Rights, which interprets the ECHR.

The UK has some of the most liberal human rights laws in the world.

We see all the time people bypassing other European Union countries just to get to the tolerant UK, to take advantage of British decency.

John Mulholland, Doagh

Editorial April 5: London should not exclude Northern Ireland in the needed retreat from ‘rights’ laws

Letter April 6: People want Northern Ireland to have rights protections, as should this paper