UK to get tough on foreign criminals using human rights laws to stay in country

London, June 11 (ANI): British Home Secretary Theresa May has warned judges to stop allowing overseas prisoners, law-breakers and illegal immigrants to stay on in Britain on the grounds that they have a right to a family life.

She promised a vote in Parliament to ram home to judges 'what the public believe' and persuade them 'to take into account what Parliament has said'.

"What I'm going to do is actually set out the rules that say this is what Parliament, this is what the public believe is how you balance the public interest against the individual's interest," May had told the BBC.Failure by the judiciary to listen will result in new laws to curb the exploitation of the human rights legislation by foreign criminals," The Daily Mail quoted May as saying.

According to figures, more than 100 criminals whom ministers hope to deport, are released from jail every month. They routinely plead they have a right to a family life in the country.

A leading immigration pressure group said that Britain would need to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights before Parliament could regain the right to set immigration law.

She said lawyers had complained that the courts had not been given clear Parliamentary guidance on what the right to a family life should be. "Parliament is going to set that out," she said.

However, some senior Tory backbenchers doubted that a vote by MPs would make an impact. (ANI)