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Chris Grayling: "We want to restore common sense"
The Conservatives say plans to stop British laws being overruled by human rights rulings from Strasbourg are "viable and legal".
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said if the Tories won the election, a new Bill of Rights would give UK courts and Parliament the "final say".
There should be no "legal blank cheque to take human rights into areas where they have never applied", he said.
Among critics of the plans are former attorney general Dominic Grieve.
Labour and the Lib Dems have said the proposals are politically motivated.
The Conservatives have long pledged to scrap the 1998 Human Rights Act, introduced under the Labour government, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into British law.
'Ultimate arbiter'In his speech to the Conservative conference on Wednesday, David Cameron said if his party forms the next government, it will replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights.
End Quote Simon Hughes Lib DemsYou can't protect the human rights of Brits and pull out of the system that protects them"
The Tories have also said they would be prepared to exercise their right to withdraw from the European Convention if Parliament and the British courts could not get the "final say" over laws applying to the UK.
Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the Court had "moved a long way away" from the principles of the 1950 Convention, to which the UK was one of the original signatories.
He said human rights laws should apply in only the most serious cases and should be more clearly defined to stop courts applying them to "whole new areas of public life".
"I think the people of this country believe that... decisions on these things - such as whether prisoners should be sent to jail for the rest of their lives without the chance of release and whether prisoners should be given the vote... should be addressed in our courts and in our Parliament."
Under the plans, Strasbourg would not be able to require the UK to change British laws, with its judgements being treated as "advisory" rather than binding.
The UK's Supreme Court would be "the ultimate arbiter" on human rights matters.
Mr Grayling added: "We have taken strong legal advice on this. The attorney general has looked at our plans and agreed they are fine, viable and legal."
However, Tory MP Dominic Grieve - who was sacked as attorney general in July, said that in many cases there was a "mass misunderstanding" of what the European Court of Human Rights does.
Recent ECHR rulings include:He told the Today programme that while some of the court's findings had been "mistaken", others had proved to be "benchmarks in improving human rights throughout Europe".
"It is right to say that on a daily basis the court is producing decisions of great importance in improving human rights in Europe, which are inevitably ignored here because they tend to concern countries in Eastern Europe," he said.
Mr Grieve said the Conservatives' blueprint published on Friday contained "a number of howlers" and "factual inaccuracies" about recent judgements - something that Mr Grayling disputes.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said the Conservatives could implement their plans only if they won an outright majority at the next election, as their Liberal Democrat coalition partners - and the Labour opposition - were against the move.
'Disaster'Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said the Human Rights Act was, to all extent and purposes, a British Bill of Rights.
Of the 1,700 cases brought against the UK government last year, he told the BBC, only eight had been upheld.
"The truth is that our courts have been free to interpret rulings by the European Convention on Human Rights for 50 years - the Human Rights Act did nothing to change that fact," he said.
"The European Court of Human Rights does need reform, which is why Labour has called for Strasbourg to do more to improve the quality of its judges and apply 'the margin of appreciation', giving member states the wriggle room to interpret decisions appropriately.
"But leaving the ECHR, which the Tories appear to be proposing, would be a disaster for this country - putting Britain in the same bracket as Belarus, Europe's last remaining dictatorship."
'Hard-won'And Lib Dem minister Simon Hughes said "hard-won" rights should not be sacrificed for short-term political reasons.
"These plans make no sense - you can't protect the human rights of Brits and pull out of the system that protects them," he said.
"Europe's human rights laws were designed by British lawyers to reflect British values of justice, tolerance and decency."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty, told the BBC's Daily Politics the plans were "about judge-bashing" and the Supreme Court only has to "take account" of Strasbourg rulings at present.
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