Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood was immediately rebuffed by Europe after calling for a shake-up of human rights laws.
She used a speech in Strasbourg to set out how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ‘feels out of step with common sense’ and needed to ‘evolve’.
But the head of the Council of Europe – the organisation which drew up the ECHR 75 years ago – said the treaty should not be used as a ‘scapegoat’ and insisted he did not support any moves to amend it.
Ms Mahmood said: ‘There is a growing perception – sometimes mistaken, sometimes grounded in reality – that human rights are no longer a shield for the vulnerable, but a tool for criminals to avoid responsibility.
‘That the law too often protects those who break the rules, rather than those who follow them.’
She added that post-war values of ‘democracy, human rights and the rule of law’ were now facing ‘distortion, doubt, even hostility’, as the public’s confidence in them was ‘fraying’.
For example, she went on, the ‘right to private and family life’ under Article 8 of the ECHR has ‘too often been used in ways that frustrate deportation’.
‘The ECHR is one of the great achievements of post-war politics. It has endured because it has evolved. Now, it must do so again,’ she said.
However, Council of Europe secretary general Alain Berset said he opposed changes to the convention.
‘I am not calling for reform of the ECHR, nor do I support any effort that would weaken it,’ he told the Politico website.
‘It should never be used as a scapegoat in domestic political debates.
‘When states face complex challenges, the answer is not to dismantle the legal guardrails they themselves helped build.
‘The proper place for dialogue is through our institutions, not through pressure on the European Court of Human Rights or attempts to bypass the system.’
It also emerged Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has launched a probe into how human rights laws are abused in extradition cases as part of a wider shake-up.
She has ordered Home Office civil servants to conduct a review of the way Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights – which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment – is being deployed in immigration cases, especially extraditions.
She is thought to be concerned over cases in which foreign nationals facing extradition from the UK are able to successfully argue it would breach their human rights because of poor conditions in prisons overseas.
There have been several examples of Brazilian nationals dodging extradition because of jail conditions in their home country, for example.
Last month Ms Cooper pledged to tighten the law on Article 8 in an immigration White Paper.
It said the Government will neuter the ability of immigration courts to allow human rights appeals, by strengthening the ‘public interest test’, making it easier to deport foreign criminals and others.
Legal changes will also make clear that Parliament has the final say on immigration law, and not judges.
Ms Cooper’s new review could mean human rights claims are curtailed when foreign nationals attempt to avoid deportation under Article 3 as well as Article 8, it is thought.
New laws curtailing the use of human rights laws in immigration cases are set to be unveiled after Labour party conference in September, the Daily Mail understands.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said a Tory government would leave the ECHR if necessary.
Former Tory home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman have both called for the UK to leave the convention.
