By Tamara Cohen PUBLISHED: 19:56 EST, 17 October 2013 | UPDATED: 19:58 EST, 17 October 2013 Britain should leave the European human rights system if it will not repeal the ban on prisoners’ voting, its most senior official has declared. By continuing to defy the ruling allowing prisoners to vote, Niels Muižnieks, human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe, said the whole system might ‘unravel.’ His strong letter to Nick Gibb MP, who chairs the parliamentary committee looking at the draft prisoners voting bill, is likely to escalate the simmering row with Strasbourg over the issue. Warning: Europe's most senior human rights official said that the European Court of Human Rights, pictured, must be obeyed
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Niels Muižnieks, Europe's most senior human rights official, warned MPs
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He sent a letter to the committee looking at the prisoners voting bill
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He said Britain must accept the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, or leave the body altogether
'I suspect the bleatings of a career European quangocrat will only stiffen the spine of MPs who want to defend British democracy, not @placeholder bureaucracy.’