It is “utterly irresponsible” to advocate for withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the Northern Ireland Secretary has said.
Hilary Benn accused the Conservative Party of advocating a policy that could undermine the Good Friday Agreement.
It comes after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said every Conservative candidate must sign up to leaving the ECHR or face being barred from standing at the next election.
Mrs Badenoch kicked off the annual Tory conference in Manchester with a pledge to leave the ECHR as part of a plan to deport 150,000 people a year from the UK.
Reform has also advocated for a withdrawal from the ECHR.
In a statement on social media, Mr Benn said: “When the Northern Ireland Bill to implement the Good Friday Agreement was debated in the House of Commons on July 20 1998, the then Conservative opposition gave it its full support.
“The GFA has resulted in over 27 years of peace after the trauma of the Troubles.
“And yet the Conservative Party has now joined Reform in advocating a policy that could undermine the Good Friday Agreement – namely by proposing to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Until recently, it was completely unthinkable that a party aspiring to govern the United Kingdom would countenance putting that agreement at risk, given that ECHR membership is one of the GFA’s founding pillars.
“Or that they would seek to put the UK in the same group as Belarus and Russia as the only three countries in Europe which would not be signatories to the convention. Utterly irresponsible.”
