Sir

You reported that prisoners might be "taking advantage" of the human rights ruling on disciplinary hearings. If there are any negative consequences of this ruling, then the blame lies with the Home Office and the Prison Service.

I helped train many prison officials on the Human Rights Act before it came into force: even then, governors were anxious about whether their power to discipline prisoners complied with the right to a fair hearing. Many of them thought it did not - but nothing was done.

The Labour government laudably brought the European Convention into domestic law. But then too many people in senior positions started to back-pedal. Instead of wanting to provide rights at a level higher than the Convention baseline, they instead opted for the lowest level of compliance that their lawyers thought they could get away with.

Despite the UK courts' overly cautious approach to the Human Rights Act, the government's tactic has sometimes backfired - this time with prisoners. The solution was to create a new system to deal with discipline years ago - but treating prisoners fairly wasn't a high enough priority.

Yours
John Wadham
Director - Liberty
21 Tabard Street
London SE1 4LA