Is the EU a threat to our civil liberties?

But a eurosceptic former MP today warned it could come under threat if Britain does not make a clean break from the European Union in March.

Christopher Gill, the former Ludlow MP and Wolverhampton meat magnate, says the age-old doctrines which have shaped the British legal system for centuries, will come under threat if Britain does not leave the EU.

And he says people should not expect much protection from growing interference from abroad if we leave under the terms of Theresa May's Brexit deal, either.

Mr Gill was one of the leading Tory euro-rebels who attempted to prevent then prime minister John Major from passing the Maastrict Treaty, which effectively created the modern European Union in the 1990s.

He has commissioned constitutional expert Torquil Dick-Erikson to compile a report looking at how the British legal system could change in future if the UK continues to fall under the auspices of the European Court of Justice.

Mr Gill says he decided to commission the paper over concerns that the Brexit debate has not given enough consideration to civil liberties and justice.

"All the debate about Brexit seems to be about jobs, and trade and money, and not about individual liberty, which is where I'm coming from," he said.

Mr Dick-Erikson says that while Theresa May's 'political declaration', which forms part of her proposed deal to leave the EU, speaks of 'shared values' between Britain and the rest of Europe, he says there is a vast difference in the British legal system compared to that elsewhere in Europe.

"In passing, we might say it is curious that a statement like this on 'shared values' should precede a withdrawal agreement, when it sounds more like a joining agreement," says Mr Dick-Erikson.

"Of course, when expressed in such vaguely general terms, we do share with our European neighbours a 'respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democratic principles, and the rule of law'.

"It is rather like when American politicians say they are in favour of 'motherhood and apple pie', which is basically a way of saying 'we are in favour of goodness'."

But Mr Dick-Erikson argues that most European legal systems are based on principles established under Napoleon's rule, and allow suspects to be detained while investigations were carried out. He cites the case of Professor Luciano Ferrari Bravo, a left-wing Italian academic who was cleared of terror charges after being held on remand for almost five years. During his time in custody, Prof Dick-Erikson appealed to the European Court of Human Rights arguing that his period of detention without trial was unreasonable. His appeal was rejected.

"This appears to us, in Britain, as not only unjust, but unfair and repugnant to our common sense," says Mr Dick-Erikson. He adds that the case attracted serious criticism from Amnesty International.

"How can we say that the presumption of innocence is one of the values that we share with our European neighbours, as the political declaration surely implies?," Mr Dick-Erikson adds.

"If this kind of legal system can fit in with their notion of 'respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms', it surely does not fit in with ours."

Mr Dick-Erikson says that while Mrs May's political declaration reaffirms the UK's commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights, we should not expect too much in the way of protection from this.

"This was signed in 1950 precisely to define some basic values, to be asserted throughout Europe so as to prevent the monstrosities that arose in some European countries leading to the carnage of World War II," says Mr Dick-Erikson.

"We are indeed often told that it was 'largely drawn up by British lawyers', so it must be ok for us.

"The trouble is, for all countries in Europe to sign up to it, it had to accommodate some very different traditions, and ways of conceiving and consuming human rights. It is a minimum common denominator, sometimes very minimal indeed, especially when applied by European Court of Human Rights judges."

Mr Dick-Erikson says one of the great merits of Britain's legal system is that the outcome of criminal trials are not decided by lawyers or judges, but by ordinary people sitting on juries or as lay magistrates.

"This practice is enshrined in our Magna Carta, article 39, that 'No free man should be punished, save by judgment of his peers'," he says. He adds that such a system does not exist elsewhere in Europe.

"The truth is that the European Convention on Human Rights is a thin blanket, designed to cover systems that are radically different," says Mr Dick-Erikson.

"The differences go back at least 800 years, when we had the Magna Carta which limited the powers of the authorities over the individual, while they got the Holy Inquisition, which increased and deepened those powers, and the methods which were swiftly adopted by absolutist secular rulers of the time all over the continent.

"The French Revolution swept away much of the old order, but it was soon taken in hand by Napoleon, whose codes – still the basis of many European Countries' laws today – did not reject the inquisitorial basic principles, but adopted and adapted them from service of the church to service of the state."