There is a huge difference between believing there should be legal protections for all humans, commonly described as human rights, and criticising the ECHR and its interpretations of case law.
I believe in legal protections for people.
But I don’t think the ECHR has been doing a balanced job in considering cases and making law.
It is clear from recent judgements that the ECHR is being used in ways that its original authors never intended. Yet I am afraid that it is only one example of lawfare – where litigation is being used as a political weapon to attack democracy and deny common sense.
Britain has the best legal system in the world. We must defend it, not see it abused or distorted through legal activism. In recent years, we have seen so many cases where foreign rapists or paedophiles cannot be deported, where critical infrastructure is endlessly delayed by spurious legal challenges, and our brave veterans are repeatedly harassed through the courts.
My constituents in Bexhill & Battle want a government that can deliver. I have long believed that if membership of the ECHR prevents the Government from delivering on its promises, we should leave it. I was elected on a manifesto in 2024 which said the same thing.
Therefore, the Leader of the Opposition asked Lord Wolfson, the shadow Attorney General and an experienced barrister, to lead a commission into tackling this lawfare. After a thorough legal analysis, he concluded that we cannot make our own laws and govern ourselves properly as a member of the ECHR. Therefore, a future Conservative Government will leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act on immigration-related matters. Both are necessary to protect our country’s borders and remove those with no right to stay, including foreign national offenders. At the same time, we would continue to protect human rights in a way that is faithful to our democratic heritage.
I would point out that Canada, New Zealand and Australia are all respected democratic countries that most people would consider fairly uphold human rights and none of them have needed to be part of the ECHR to do it.
Nothing about this would prevent us from instituting our own set of legal protections and making use of our historically renowned legal systems to enforce them. But if based in the UK, there would always be the balance of the role of Parliament to any rulings made by the courts. There is no such balance for the ECHR.
I recognise these are bold changes. But the greatest danger is allowing lawfare to make this country less fair, less safe, and less democratic.
Kieran