Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights Debate
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Tony Vaughan
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Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights
Tony Vaughan Excerpts(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate. The ECHR has delivered extraordinary victories for British people. When Jeanette Smith and Graeme Grady were discharged from the armed forces simply for being gay, the English courts rejected their challenge, but the Strasbourg Court unanimously upheld their rights. Today the armed forces welcome all people regardless of sexual orientation.
The ECHR has protected children wrongfully taken into care; workers have won the right to express their faith and mental health patients have gained proper legal safeguards. Those are not abstract legal victories—they are real, and have changed people’s lives for the better. Yet many voices, including that of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place, paint the ECHR as our enemy and as a barrier to border control. They could not be more wrong. The truth is that we need the ECHR to manage our borders.
A common rights framework means that our European partners will work with us to tackle organised people smuggling and to protect our national security. We had the UK-France deal this summer, Bulgaria is intercepting smuggling boats at the EU border, and Germany is reforming its criminal laws to confront these shared challenges. Even Rwanda said that it will not work with us unless we observe human rights. Let us not forget that it was the failed Brexit project that destroyed the Dublin regulation, leaving us without any EU returns agreement. We then saw the number of dangerous crossings soar.
The ECHR did not stop the UK from removing 34,000 people with no right to be here in 2024, which was the highest number since 2017. Under 1% of foreign national offenders successfully appeal deportation on human rights grounds; since 1980, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge said, the Strasbourg Court found against the UK on deportation cases just a handful of times, only four of which concerned family life. The Reform and Tory policy of ECHR withdrawal is simply Brexit 2.0 and isolationism. It will not secure our borders. It will not solve anything.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
My hon. and learned Friend has listed a number of very good examples of what has been achieved as a result of the ECHR. Does he agree that we need to work together to highlight its benefits, as opposed to seeking to tear it down or tear it apart?
David Mundell (in the Chair)
Can the hon. and learned Gentleman conclude in 30 seconds, because there is no additional time for interventions?
Tony Vaughan
I will conclude by saying that, on this 75th anniversary, 300 organisations—from Liberty to Mind, Shelter to Amnesty—rightly defend the convention. It is up to this Government to demonstrate to the public that we can have both border control and compassion. Let us celebrate 75 years of freedom, and 75 more.