Think tank "Policy Exchange" tells UK to leave European Court of Human Rights

Based on a recent report in the UK, conservative British think tank Policy Exchange called for the British government to rescind its commitment to the ECtHR.

Why?

The human rights regime that the Court is the guardian of has prevented to UK from stripping prisoners of their right to vote and from deporting terror suspects back to a country where they could be tortured.

Sounds like the UK just wants to be able to violate human rights a bit more than the Court will allow them too.

It's also important to remember here that the Court, although it decides on these matters, is not the body that enforces its decisions. That is left up to a political body: the Committee of Ministers. The Committee is made up of the foreign affairs ministers of all member states and oversees the implementation of the Court's decision by the State against which the decision was rendered. If the State does not implement the decision properly, the Committee can use political means (i.e. diplomatic pressure) to encourage the State to comply. It rarely goes further than this. The Committee does have the power (though rarely uses it) to bring the State before the Court again to get a declaration of non-compliance. The Committee requires two-thirds of the voting members to agree to these proceedings (see rule 11(4) of the Rules of the Committee of Ministers for the supervision of the execution of judgments and of the terms of friendly settlements. Adopted 10 May 2006). Thus, in the end, it is a political body - not a judicial one - that determines whether decisions get implemented. This means that in the final analysis the ECtHR is a democratic institution and one that its member states have agreed to be part of. If the member states believe the ECtHR goes too far in its decisions it may always simply fail to force states to implement them.