Taking the UK out of the European convention on human rights in response to rightwing pressure over immigration would be a serious mistake, the new chair of Britain’s equalities watchdog has warned, saying the treaty underpins fundamental rights relied on by everyone in the country.
Mary-Ann Stephenson, who became head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission earlier this month, said the convention was a vital part of the UK’s legal framework but had become the subject of misleading and dangerous public debate.Stephenson said there needed to be greater honesty in how human rights were discussed and warned that the demonisation of migrants risked making life harder not only for people who move to the UK but also for ethnic minority British citizens.
She said portraying migration as a threat to the country could have deeply damaging consequences and criticised the way isolated court cases were often used to attack the convention.She pointed to a real risk of politicians and commentators repeatedly citing cases in which human rights arguments had been raised but ultimately failed, giving a distorted impression of how the system worked.
Stephenson highlighted research from the University of Oxford that identified several high-profile examples of misleading coverage, including the so-called “chicken nuggets” case, which was widely reported as blocking a deportation because a child disliked foreign food, despite the decision not being based on that detail and having already been overturned.Political debate over the UK’s membership of the convention has intensified in recent years, particularly around cases involving deportations.
Figures on the right have claimed the treaty hampers the government’s ability to remove people from the country, with both the Conservatives and Reform UK saying they would leave the convention altogether.The Labour government is currently reviewing human rights law as part of plans to make deportation cases easier to win.
Proposed changes include alterations to article 3, which prohibits torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, and article 8, which protects the right to family life. Both articles have featured prominently in high-profile legal challenges to deportations.Stephenson described the convention as “really important”, noting that it is embedded in domestic law through the Human Rights Act and arguing that withdrawal would weaken protections relied on across society.
She cited the case of black cab rapist John Worboys, in which the supreme court ruled that police could be held liable for serious investigative failures, as well as another case involving an elderly couple who faced being separated when one required residential care.She said these were examples of cases where most people would instinctively agree that rights had been properly upheld and that protections should exist.
Leaving the convention, she argued, would undermine those safeguards and diminish the rights everyone depends on.Her comments came after the head of the body overseeing the convention said earlier this month that member states had taken an important first step by agreeing to examine reforms to address migration challenges within the existing legal framework, rather than abandoning it altogether.