This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Kingdom’s ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), presenting a timely opportunity to reflect on the impact of the Convention since it opened for signature by members of the Council of Europe in 1950. Mounting pressure on political leaders in the United Kingdom and across Europe to address concerns about irregular migration has prompted renewed scrutiny over the influence of the ECHR, in particular its dynamic interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), on the ability of Contracting Parties to control their borders. In May 2025, a joint letter initiated by Denmark and Italy and signed by nine Member States raised concerns that the ECtHR had ‘extended the scope of the Convention too far as compared with the original intentions’ and ‘posed too many limitations on the states’ ability to decide whom to expel from their territories’.
These criticisms are reflected domestically. In October 2025, the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, announced that a future Conservative government would leave the ECHR if it won the next General Election. This followed advice from the Shadow Attorney General, Lord Wolfson, responding to Kemi Badenoch’s speech at the Royal United Services Institute in June 2025, which set out five tests against which the UK’s membership of the ECHR would be measured. This was, at least in part, a response to growing support amongst right-wing voters for Reform UK. The relevance of Lord Wolfson’s advice lies predominantly in the ‘Sovereign Borders Test’, which treats the Convention as imposing ‘substantial limitations’ on the Government’s ability to implement a stringent immigration policy and characterises withdrawal as, in effect, a ‘gateway condition’ for the reforms envisaged.
One noticeable consequence followed from this announcement. It largely shut down the conversation within the Conservative Party about the UK’s membership of the ECHR. When asked about how the Conservatives would address concerns about irregular migration, the answer would simply be that the Party believes withdrawal from the Convention is the only way to implement a stringent borders policy, and no further questions are asked. For those of us who want to see a Conservative government at the next General Election, a more honest and pragmatic conversation is needed about whether this policy would actually address concerns about irregular migration and deliver a fairer and more efficient asylum system.
This is not to say that valid concerns do not exist. Only 48% of refused asylum seekers who applied between 2010 and 2020 had been removed from the country by June 2024. Indeed, between 2018 and 2024, a mere 3% of people arriving by small boat had been returned during that same period. In the last year, over half of asylum seekers arrived in the UK through illegal routes, although these numbers have started to fall. As such, whilst there are signs of improvement in the UK, there is an urgent need for politicians across Europe to address this challenge. But as this paper will demonstrate, the Conservative Party’s proposal to withdraw from the Convention is another threadbare solution and one that, if implemented, would have severe consequences for our domestic constitutional settlement and our role on the world stage.
The analysis proceeds in three parts. It begins by examining how the ECHR has evolved and operates across Europe, and how it has been woven into the United Kingdom’s domestic legal framework. It then evaluates the claim advanced most prominently in the Wolfson Review that the ECHR is a substantial hindrance to the Government’s ability to operate a stringent immigration policy. It considers the extent to which withdrawal would, in practice, address these concerns given the patchwork of common law protections and international obligations that underlies our human rights framework. It explores the grave implications our departure would have for the stability of the Union, in particular the peace settlement in Northern Ireland under the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and for our membership of the Council of Europe. The relevance of the Windsor Framework in the event of our withdrawal is also considered, in addition to the strain that would be placed on the UK’s ability to co-operate with our European counterparts through the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
Having established that leaving the ECHR is a threadbare solution with serious adverse consequences, this paper sets out alternative pragmatic proposals, both domestically and at a European level, for the United Kingdom to work constructively with its counterparts in the EU and within the Council of Europe to meet this shared challenge.
