The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, has said Britain’s human rights law does not prevent the successful capture and prosecution of terrorists, warning that hard-won freedoms should not be traded unnecessarily.
Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions who oversaw dozens of terror cases, said Theresa May was misguided to focus on human rights law rather than policing cuts.
“There is no incompatibility between protecting human rights and taking effective action against terrorists,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“If we start throwing away our adherence to human rights in response to what has happened in the last three months, we are throwing away the values at the heart of the democracy, everything that we say we believe in.”
Starmer said he had never found human rights law a barrier to successful prosecutions of terrorists or those preparing acts of terrorism. “I know because I did it for five years,” he said. “We did not run into the Human Rights Act as a problem preventing successful prosecutions. We put a lot of people away for a very long time.”
The prime minister told reporters on Tuesday she was prepared to rip up human rights laws to impose new restrictions on terror suspects, including looking at how to make it easier to deport foreign terror suspects and how to increase controls on extremists where it is thought they present a threat but there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.
May has been under pressure over her record as home secretary, including over policing cuts and questions over intelligence failures, following terror attacks on London Bridge, in Manchester and in Westminster.
Starmer said from his experience it was “officers on the ground that often pick up key intelligence” and batted away a suggestion by Radio 4 presenter John Humphrys that Labour’s argument on police cuts had run its course.
“I absolutely empathise with victims of terrorism. What we need to do is take action that is effective,” he said. “We need to ask searching questions about the prime minister’s record over the past seven years and why we have got to a stage where three attacks in three months have taken place and what’s the relationship between that and some of the cutbacks that have been taken.
“We’ve had three attacks in three months, we need to review the situation and I think simply parsing some difficult questions within 24 hours as ‘we don’t need to ask them any more’ is not really taking it as seriously as we should.”
However, Starmer said he was not in favour of Britain introducing a state of emergency similar to the kind in France, which has allowed the state new powers of detention for terror suspects and potential associates.
“I don’t think we should introduce a state of emergency … we have to keep our feet on the ground,” he said. “The question is that these suspects are not being identified early enough in the process for us to take effective action. What people want I think is preventative action and that’s why, in fairness to everyone this has affected, let’s concentrate on the issue at hand.”
The prime minister said she intended to enact “longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences … making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries [and] doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court”.
“If human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it,” May said.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, told Sky News the party was against any changes to human rights. “We have to protect our basic freedoms, our basic democracy and our human rights,” he said. “We are signed up to the European convention on human rights. Our Human Rights Act protects our rights.”
The proposed measures appear to be an attempt at strengthening terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims) rather than a complete return to Labour’s control orders, which were repeatedly struck down by the courts and then scrapped by May in 2010 when she was home secretary.
May could also attempt to increase the period for which terror suspects can be held without trial, currently 14 days – a move that provoked clashes with civil liberties campaigners when Tony Blair attempted it after the 7 July 2005 attacks. One of the most vocal opponents to the change was David Davis, now the Brexit secretary.
May told the Sun she would consult the intelligence agencies about what they thought was needed: “When we reduced it to 14 days, we actually allowed for legislation to enable it to be at 28 days. We said there may be circumstances where it is necessary to do this. I will listen to what they think is necessary for us to do.”
The Conservatives have promised not to withdraw from the European convention on human rights during the next parliament, but it is possible May’s plans could involve seeking further derogations from the ECHR.