Ruling that may free Hindley

The Home Secretary was today stripped of his power to keep convicted killers behind bars after the Parole Board has recommended their release.

The defeat will focus attention on whether politicians have the right to decide when life-sentence prisoners such as Moors murderer Myra Hindley should be released.

But the Home Office insisted today that the legal defeat for the Government in the European Court of Human Rights would not boost Hindley's hopes of freedom.

The Strasbourg judges backed a claim by convicted murderer Dennis Stafford that a decision to keep him in jail longer than recommended by the Parole Board was illegal.

Stafford, now nearly 70, from Durham, was released on licence in 1979 after being jailed for life in 1967 for murder. But he was returned to jail after being convicted for fraud and the Home Office has overruled a Parole Board decision that it is now safe to release him.

The Home Secretary has already been stripped of his powers to fix sentences for child killers after the murderers of James Bulger won a legal test case in Strasbourg.

Today's judgment will not bar him from fixing minimum terms for adult killers, but Home Office sources concede that a legal challenge in the near future is inevitable.

Talk about the ruling