Woolf compares UK human rights to 'apartheid'

Lord Woolf, the country's most senior judge, has criticised Britain's "worrying" record on human rights by comparing it to South Africa under apartheid.

The Lord Chief Justice said the Government had breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on 50 occasions in almost the same number of years and violated every article under the treaty.

He described this record as being "analogous to apartheid in South Africa contributing to the development of international law through its repeated violations of human rights, rather than through its observance".

Lord Woolf said the 50 violations since the ECHR was established in 1951 showed Britain had been "shunning its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights".

In an article published yesterday to coincide with the centenary celebrations of the British Academy, Lord Woolf added: "This worrying figure does not even include matters that have come before the European Commission on Human Rights and which the United Kingdom has then settled in order to prevent the matter reaching the Court."

Last year Lord Woolf clashed with the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, when he warned of the potential dangers of suspending Britain's own Human Rights Act to accommodate emergency anti-terrorism legislation in the wake of the 11 September attacks.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said new anti-terrorism laws under which some suspects can be detained indefinitely without trial should last no longer than necessary.

In September he warned the Government not to lose sight of its own Human Rights Act 1998. Lord Woolf said: "What can happen in times of stress is, without appreciating it, the government can get matters wrong. So, the Human Rights Act is there as a valuable protection to protect the liberty of the citizens generally and, in doing so, the liberty of the individual."

Yesterday, he also chose to emphasise the important role played by British judges since the incorporation of the ECHR into domestic law in October 2000. Speaking at the British Academy's conference entitled "the role of Britain in Europe in the 21st Century," he said English judges were now playing an "active and constructive role in enriching and constantly evolving European human rights jurisprudence".

But in his article he said: "... it is easy to succumb to suggestion that English contribution to the development of European human rights jurisprudence has been primarily to provide cases which gave the European Court of Human Rights the opportunity to uphold those rights."