November 2025
Nigel Farage’s proposal for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights was defeated on 29 October by 154 votes to 96, a majority of 58. The vote was largely symbolic: a ten-minute bill without government backing is often used simply to air an issue. The Liberal Democrats led the opposition to the bill, a number of Conservatives joined Reform UK in supporting it and many Labour backbenchers chose not to abstain but voted against it, fearing that were it to pass even symbolically, it would send a negative message to European allies.
The position of the Government remains that while it may pursue some changes to the interpretation of the Convention it would under no circumstances seek to abolish it.
75th Anniversary
A statement of support for the ECHR was signed by almost 300 organisations to mark the 75th anniversary of the Convention. Organised by Liberty, the statement highlighted the many ways the Convention has helped ordinary people from victims of sexual violence to LGBT+ service personnel, public interest journalists to mental health patients and victims of grave miscarriages of justice, as with the Hillsborough and Windrush cases.
It calls on the government to make the positive case for the UK’s human rights protections and claims that the way the Convention has been scapegoated in recent years has had devastating real world consequences.
Meanwhile a survey for Amnesty by the widely respected agency Savanta concluded that more than 8 in 10 UK adults say that human rights protections are as important – or more important – today than when the ECHR was created after the Second World War. When asked which rights matter most to them, UK adults chose: the right to a fair trial (42%); the right to life (41%); the right to privacy, family life and respect for your home (40%).
Support for staying in the ECHR is almost twice as high as support for leaving. 48% want the UK to remain part of the ECHR. Only 26% want to leave.
People believe rights should be universal, permanent, and protected from political interference: 87% agree that rights and laws must apply equally to everyone, 85% agree we need a legal safety net to hold the Government accountable in cases like the infected blood scandal and Grenfell and 78% agree rights should be permanent, not something the Government of the day can reduce.
Respondents were shown a list of major UK scandals or institutional failings and asked which made them feel the importance of strong legal protections and accountability. The top five were:
Grenfell Tower – 46%; Hillsborough disaster and cover up – 42%; Infected blood scandal & the COVID inquiry – 37%; The murder of Sarah Everard – 36%; Windrush scandal – 29%.
ECHR and Immigration
In response to critics attributing the real problems of the UK’s immigration system to the ECHR, the Good Law Project set out some basic facts about the Convention, namely that it does not provide a right for people to enter or remain in a country of which they are not a national; that the Court rarely rules against the UK on immigration issues at all – since 1980 only on 13 of the 29 cases concerning either deportation or extradition. And while the Human Rights Act of 1998 incorporating ECHR rights into UK law makes it unnecessary to go to Strasbourg, successful claims to stay in the UK are rare. Last year out of a total inward immigration of 948,000 only 3,790 cases related to the Human Rights Act were won at immigration tribunals.
Protect the Protest: Palestine Action and Judicial Review
Amnesty and Liberty will be making the case to lift the ban on the proscribed activist group Palestine Action in the Judicial Review scheduled for 25 – 27 November.
Defend Our Juries are urging the police not to bow to pressure from the Government but to allow the
peaceful protests organised throughout November at the continuing crisis in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. They say that police are struggling to enforce the law in the face of peaceful protesters, many of them elderly. Some police forces are refusing outright to make arrests. International and national human rights groups, politicians and United Nations representatives have condemned both the ban and the subsequent attacks on civil liberties. Unions are declaring that they will not recognise the ban, with over 2,100 now arrested under ‘terror charges’ related to this peaceful sign-holding campaign.
Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty’s Director, criticised the Home Secretary for statements “that create a chilling effect by dissuading people from exercising their fundamental right to peaceful protest. At any time, any interference with freedom of expression must be strictly necessary, proportionate and in full accordance with the law.”
In a further incident of Transnational repression Sheffield Hallam University terminated a staff member’s project about Uyghur forced labour after Chinese security officers interrogated a staff member in Beijing and a Chinese company named in the report filed a defamation lawsuit in the UK. The university retracted the ban but only after Professor Laura Murphy, specialising in human rights and modern slavery, began legal action against it for violating her academic freedom.
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