Last April, the UK Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge of Maltese descent, said that it was up to English judges to save English common law by relying on it for precedents instead of the European Convention on Human Rights. In June, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, told ECHR judges in Strasbourg that they should show more acute appreciation of the independence of English law. In July, the President of the UK Supreme Court, Lord Phillips, speaking at the end of the court’s first full legal year, said that “whenever Strasbourg gives a judgement which... leads us to believe that perhaps they haven’t fully appreciated how things work in this country, we invite them to think again”.

The recent award of €12,000 by the ECHR to an illegal immigrant in compensation for a detention which is calculated to be one week over the limit in Malta, makes the above comments very topical. The wording of this judgment itself raises serious doubts on how much the learned judges fully appreciated the situation in Malta. An appeal to make the ECHR think again would be quite in place.