Theresa May ready for showdown with courts over foreign prisoners' rights Theresa May said on The Andrew Marr Show that the right to family life was not an absolute right. Theresa May is heading for a renewed showdown with the courts over the rights of foreign prisoners battling to avoid deportation after signalling that she would bring in primary legislation if judges failed to implement new rules. The home secretary said she would seek the backing of parliament to give priority to deportation above the right to family life enshrined in article 8 of the European convention on human rights. MPs are to be asked in the next few weeks to approve a Commons motion advising the judges that the right to family life is not absolute and should be overridden if doing so is in the national interest. May also said she would set out on Monday an overhaul of the rules on family migration that will mean UK citizens earning less than £18,600, depending on the number of children involved, will not be allowed to bring a foreign husband, wife or partner into Britain to live with them. The gross income threshold is lower than the minimum £25,700 figure that May tried to persuade Nick Clegg to accept, according to a letter leaked in March. The home secretary said a minimum gross income of £24,800 would be needed if there were two children involved, with a further £2,200 for each extra child. It is believed that as many as 25,000 families a year could be affected by the changes. Critics say British citizens will face a choice of exile or splitting up their families, and warned that it would lead to a string of legal challenges under article 8. The home secretary first promised action over article 8 at the Tory party conference last year, when she cited the case of a Bolivian man and his pet cat. On Sunday she told the BBC she was now prepared to bring in legislation if the judges ignored the will of parliament in redefining the right to family life. This is not an absolute right. So in the interests of the economy or of controlling migration or of public order - those sorts of issues - the state has a right to qualify this right to a family life," she said. What I am going to do is actually set out the rules and say this is what parliament, this is what the public believe is how you balance the public interest against an individual's interest. We are going to ask parliament to vote on this to say very clearly what constitutes the right to a family life. I would expect that judges will look at what parliament has said. But leading human rights lawyers warned that ministers could not use secondary legislation such as the immigration rules to dictate to judges or trump their interpretation of article 8. Parliament cannot predetermine the results of individual cases, which all depend on careful and compassionate assessment of very different facts. However merciless Mrs May may be, hard cases make bad law and politicians make bad judges," Geoffrey Robertson QC told the Sunday Times. Sir Geoffrey Bindman said: "Any change is ineffective because ultimately what controls the situation is article 8 as interpreted by the court of human rights and the domestic courts. The legal position is that in so far as the immigration rules are incompatible with the human rights convention then the convention prevails. Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, told the Guardian that article 8 had always been qualified and allowed the government considerable latitude over immigration control. "The home secretary is far better reviewing immigration rules than bashing the Human Rights Act or the judiciary," she said. But given the toxic nature of immigration politics in a recession, it becomes especially important to distinguish - in both rules and rhetoric - between abuse and criminality and anything that splits up genuine innocent families of British nationals. The Home Office says that 185 foreign prisoners successfully appealed against deportation last year after citing article 8. Under the new rules, foreign prisoners sentenced to between 12 months and four years would be deported in the public interest unless they had been resident in the UK for 20 years or had a foreign child who had lived here for seven years. Criminals given shorter sentences who have caused "serious harm" or who are persistent offenders would also be deported. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said that under 8% of foreign prisoners facing deportation won appeals on article 8 grounds and that the changes would undoubtedly be contested in the courts. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, also denied that human rights legislation was the main reason for the failure to deport foreign national criminals. The truth is this government is deporting fewer and fewer foreign criminals every year because of failures in enforcement and administration. Today's announcement from Theresa May does nothing to tackle these failings which are letting too many foreign criminals stay in Britain," said Cooper. Drawing up new guidance for the courts is sensible, and parliament will need to debate the detail. But it isn't enough to sort out the problem.