Sam Wolf

Chris, we can have a serious debate about controlling our borders, but we should also be honest about what you are proposing. The ECHR is NOT an immigration treaty, and leaving it would not affect only people arriving in small boats. It protects ALL of us. Yes, migrants use ECHR protections. Between 2015 and 2024, immigration judges allowed more than 60,000 appeals against removal on ECHR grounds. But that figure covers the entire immigration system. It does NOT mean 60,000 people arriving illegally by small boat. Look more closely at foreign national offenders. Between April 2008 and June 2021, 21,521 deportation appeals were lodged. 6,042 were allowed, of which 2,392 were allowed on human-rights grounds. And the supposedly all-powerful Strasbourg emergency injunction? Between 2019 and 2021 there were 180 Rule 39 applications against the UK. Just SEVEN were granted. In 2023 there were 61 requests. ONE was granted. There is no comparable statistic saying “X British citizens used the ECHR”, because British people routinely rely on Convention rights through our own courts and public authorities under the Human Rights Act. Those cases are not centrally classified according to nationality. And they matter. The victims of serial rapist John Worboys used Article 3 and the Human Rights Act to hold the Metropolitan Police accountable for serious failures in investigating his crimes. These rights protect your right to life, your liberty, your right to a fair trial, your privacy, your freedom of expression, your freedom of religion, your property and your protection from torture, slavery and degrading treatment. There is another problem with your argument. Leaving the ECHR does NOT automatically mean “no asylum claim”. Refugee status comes primarily from the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, not the ECHR. Nor are asylum seekers generally receiving the ordinary benefits available to British citizens. While their claims are being considered they cannot normally claim mainstream benefits such as Universal Credit. Destitute asylum seekers receive a separate, limited asylum-support system. So let us debate immigration policy, deportation and border control on their merits. But please do not pretend that withdrawing from the ECHR simply takes rights away from illegal migrants. It does not. It would withdraw the UK's external Convention guarantee, and access to Strasbourg, from every one of us. And there is a certain historical irony here. The ECHR grew out of the horrors Europe had witnessed during the Second World War. Winston Churchill championed a European Charter of Human Rights. British Conservative lawyer Sir David Maxwell Fyfe played a central role in drafting the Convention. Britain was the FIRST country to ratify it, in 1951. Our forebears fought against regimes that demonstrated what can happen when the State has enormous power and the individual has too little protection. The generation that followed did something about it. They put fundamental rights into law. By all means strengthen our borders. But if Parliament is being asked to surrender protections that belong to 68 million people in order to deal with a fraction of that number crossing the Channel, then we deserve a far more honest debate about exactly what we are giving up.