The UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has been increasingly called into question in recent years amid growing concern over illegal migration.
But the issue has come to a head in August as a result of outrage over the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels in Britain, with protests breaking out across the UK.
Here, The Independent takes a look at what the ECHR is, why some people think we should quit and why others say leaving may bring more problems than it solves.
What is the ECHR?
The ECHR is an international human rights treaty between the 47 states that are members of the Council of Europe (CoE).
Governments that are signed up to the ECHR have made a legal commitment to abide by certain standards of behaviour and to protect the basic rights and freedoms of people. It is aimed at protecting the rule of law and promoting democracy in European countries.
The concept of the ECHR was devised during the Second World War in the early 1940s, and was developed to ensure that governments would never again be allowed to dehumanise and abuse people’s rights with impunity, and to help fulfil the promise of ‘never again’.
After the ECHR came into force in 1953, the European Court of Human Rights was then set up to safeguard the ECHR. Judgments of the court legally bind countries to stand by its rulings.
Why has it been criticised?
Critics of the convention argue that it limits the UK’s ability to control its own laws and policies, primarily regarding immigration and national security.
For example, it was the ECHR that contributed to the failure of the previous government’s beleaguered Rwanda scheme, issuing a number of injunctions which prevented planes from taking off.
As a result, there have been increasing calls for Britain to quit or suspend the convention, including from Reform leader Nigel Farage. Meanwhile, former Labour home secretary Jack Straw has called for Britain to “decouple” British laws from the ECHR.
Mr Straw, who helped draft the 1998 Human Rights Act – which incorporates the ECHR into UK law – said the legislation is being misused by UK courts to prevent ministers from deporting illegal migrants.
Lord Blunkett, who also served as home secretary in a previous Labour government, urged the prime minister to suspend the convention to deport thousands of rejected asylum seekers who are being housed in hotels.
Why could quitting the convention create more problems than it solves?
Leaving the ECHR would require parliamentary approval to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates ECHR rights into UK law.
But such a move would also breach the Good Friday Agreement – the 1998 peace accord that ended decades of conflict in Northern Ireland – as this guarantees the convention’s enforceability in Northern Ireland.
There are fears that such a move would undermine the UK’s international standing, with Downing Street saying it would put Britain in the same camp as Russia and Belarus.
Dominic Grieve, co-president of European Movement UK and former attorney general, told The Independent that quitting the ECHR would lead to a “whole host of political problems”.
“It would unravel the Good Friday Agreement, destabilise our devolution settlements, and collapse our security and trade deal with the EU – undermining data sharing, extradition, and policing cooperation that keep us safe”, he said, warning it would lead to a “profound loss of influence, security and stability”.
Meanwhile, Kolbassia Haoussou from Freedom from Torture said quitting the ECHR would be “a gift to repressive regimes” and said Britain would be abandoning one of humanity’s “clearest moral lines”.
Adam Wagner KC, a human rights lawyer, said Mr Farage’s plans to quit the ECHR to solve the migrant crisis were both “legally extreme” and misleading.
“A lot of the rights contained in the European convention come from British common law: the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, and the right not to be tortured,” he told The Guardian.
There are also concerns that unpicking the ECHR from UK law may not actually make it easier to deport people from Britain.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, human rights lawyer Philippe Sands said “it wouldn’t make a lot of difference”.
“The idea that somehow the European Convention on Human Rights, or the Human Rights Act is what is stopping the British government or other governments from enacting reasonable, proportionate and sensible measures is frankly, absurd.
“The European Convention on Human Rights very largely, takes principles of English common law applies them more broadly and internationally”, he added.
However, former Tory foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who came out in support of quitting the convention this week, said it was appeals to the ECHR that has blocked both the current government and previous ones from taking action to bring down migration.
He said that quitting the convention would bring down the length of the current appeals process – but asked which cases in the ECHR had stopped the British government from enacting the legislation that it wants to take, he could not say.
