The attorney general has trashed calls from Nigel Farage and some senior Conservatives to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), saying that abandoning it would send “an immensely damaging signal” to Britain’s allies.
Lord Richard Hermer said abandoning the human rights convention would leave Britain “in the company of Russia and Belarus” (Russia was expelled from the ECHR after its invasion of Ukraine, while Belarus has never joined the Council of Europe).
Sir Keir Starmer’s top lawyer said one of the complaints often made against the ECHR is that it makes it impossible to deport people overseas who may then face the risk of death or torture.
“If we wanted to get around that, we would have to leave not only the ECHR, we would have to leave the [UN] Torture Convention, we would have to leave the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we would have to leave the International Convention on Civil or Political Rights,” he told a Lords committee.
“We would become, together with Russia and Belarus, in splendid isolation on this planet, which I do not think is in the interests of this country.”
Doing so would send “an immensely damaging signal, not only about where we are in the world currently, but about the importance of international cooperation and core shared values,” Lord Hermer said.
The Reform UK leader has long supported leaving the ECHR in a bid to be able to deport migrants who arrive in the UK on small boats.
His plans would see Britain ditch the ECHR and replace the Human Rights Act with the UK Bill of Rights, which would only apply to British citizens and those who have a legal right to live in the Britain.
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch has promised to set out the Conservative Party’s position on the ECHR at its annual conference in October.
It is widely expected that she will adopt leaving the convention as the party’s official position, a stance long held by shadow justice secretary and leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick.
In June, Ms Badenoch launched a commission looking into the effectiveness of the ECHR and whether it would be possible to leave. At the time, she said the UK would “probably” have to pull out.
Lord Hermer said Britain can toughen its stance on immigration without falling foul of the ECHR, adding that “some of our colleagues in the Council of Europe have much more robust immigration and asylum rules that are compatible with article eight” of the convention.
Article eight of the convention protects the fundamental right to respect for an individual’s private and family life.
Lord Hermer added: “I want to make sure we’ve got the best and most effective immigration and asylum rules possible. There’s a real area of work to be done there, and I know the home secretary is absolutely on it.”
He lashed out at the “broken” immigration and asylum system left by the Conservatives, using some of his strongest language yet in pledging to bring the numbers coming to the UK under control. The government will “leave no stone unturned in trying to protect this country’s interests, and dealing with the immigration and asylum system, in large part broken when we came in”, he said.
