Chris Grayling

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling issued an apology to the House of Commons today after informing MPs that telephone calls between prisoners and their constituency Members of Parliament or MPs' offices may have been recorded or in some cases listened to by prison staff.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has rejected criticism of his party's proposals to withdraw the UK from EU human rights law, stressing that he had consulted a range of QCs and other experts before producing the paper.

He also insisted the current Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, believed the plans were "fine, viable and legal" and pointed out that he had a longstanding disagreement on the issue with Mr Grieve - who was sacked in David Cameron's last reshuffle.

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Proposed Conservative Party plans to pull the UK out of the European Court of Human Rights are a "very retrograde step" Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable has said.

Speaking on a visit to Edinburgh, he continued:

The former Attorney General has rubbished plans by the Conservative Party to strip the European court of their power to enforce human rights in the UK.

Dominic Grieve QC slammed proposals by the current attorney Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, saying that they contained a series of "howlers" and were not properly thought through and that there was already plans in motion to reform the European Court of Human Rights in Strausbourg.

More: Tories threaten to scrap Human Rights Act

"All courts are ultimately human constructs and they will sometimes get things right and sometimes get things wrong," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"In many cases there is a misunderstanding of what the court does.

Even the paper which has just been produced by my colleague Chris Grayling includes in it a number of howlers which are simply factually inaccurate.

One howler is...where it says that the court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has prevented the imposition of whole life tariffs on whole life tariff prisoners in this country.

It hasn't. Its judgment never said that."

Mr Grieve added: "It seems to me it is factually inaccurate in what it says, and that is unfortunate.

Because if one is going to approach a complex subject I think it is very important that we should all collectively adopt a moderate and measured approach towards explaining what the issues are and what can and cannot be done."

Sean Humber, head of the human rights team at law firm Leigh Day, said it was "intellectually dishonest" to imply that scrapping the Human Rights Act would reduce the UK's human rights obligations as it would still be signed up to, and obliged to comply with, the European Convention on Human Rights.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty, said:

Tim Hancock, campaigns director of Amnesty UK, said:

The right of victims of crime to directly confront the offenders who damaged their lives in court is to be enshrined in law, the Government said.

Publicly-funded lawyers are also to be barred from taking on serious sex offence cases unless they have undergone specialist training.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said a reform package - including the creation of a Victims' Information Service - would ensure the "highest emphasis" is put on those who suffer at the hands of criminals.

Under a code introduced last year, victims are able to choose to explain to the court and offender how a crime has affected them by reading out a Victim Personal Statement which is taken into account by judges when determining the sentence.

Removing red tape to protect good samaritans and responsible employers is "common sense", according to the Justice Secretary.

Plans to change the law so judges will have to give weight to factors when deciding negligence cases, including whether someone was acting responsibly, will give good samaritans the legal protection they deserve, Chris Grayling said.