Responding to reports that Prime Minister David Cameron is planning to curtail access to the European Court of Human Rights, Allan Hogarth Head of Policy and Government Affairs at Amnesty International UK, said:

“The steady drum beat of threats to dismantle human rights protections for people in the UK reached a manic crescendo this week.

“These latest reports beggar belief and, if true, reveal a plan which is both immature and ill conceived.

“Cameron appears intent on rubbishing the UK's commitment to human rights and so undermining its influence as a moral authority on the world stage.

“He must not cast aside the reasonable arguments against this course of action.

“Lest we forget we are talking about a European court which oversees governments and has previously reprimanded the UK government when it wanted to indefinitely retain the DNA of innocent people, when it placed restrictions on the freedom of the press and when it decided that it was happy to indefinitely detain terror suspects without charge or trial.

“We allow Cameron to rip away this safety net at our peril.”