More support for staying in ECHR than leaving, poll suggests

Nearly half of the UK public support staying in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), almost twice the proportion who say the country should leave the treaty, new polling has suggested.

A survey conducted by Savanta for Amnesty International asked 2,099 adults in the UK their position on the ECHR as it marks its 75th anniversary and found more respondents backed remaining in the convention.

The poll comes as political debate surrounds the ECHR in relation to immigration cases, including calls to quit it by the Conservatives and Reform UK.

Some 1,009 (48%) of respondents believed the UK should continue to be a member of the convention while 538 (26%) said the UK should withdraw, according to the poll seen by the PA news agency.

A further 552 people (26%) answered “don’t know”.

Meanwhile, 1,636 people – nearly eight in 10 (78%)- believed rights and protections should be permanent, and it should not be up to the government of the day to reduce people’s rights.

Amnesty International UK’s human rights legal protections campaign manager Tom Morrison said: “The polling could not be clearer: people value their rights and they do not trust politicians to mark their own homework.

“Seventy-five years ago, in the aftermath of war and atrocity, a generation resolved that ‘Never Again’ must mean something real.

“Human rights were not designed for fair weather. They were built for the storms, for the moments of populism, institutional failure and authoritarian creep. Exactly the sort of challenges we face today.

“Honouring the ECHR is not about the past. It’s about protecting people now and safeguarding what future generations will inherit.”

According to the poll, 266 (73%) of 365 respondents who are likely to support Labour at the next election said the UK should stay in the ECHR, compared to 44 (12%) who think the country should withdraw.

Of those likely to vote Conservative, 111 (43%) of 256 backed remaining in the treaty, compared to 93 (36%) who said to leave and 52 (20%) who did not know.

The poll suggested Reform voters were more likely to support quitting the ECHR, as 265 (61%) of 438 respondents said to withdraw and 106 (24%) wanted to remain.

The Government has said it will not leave the European treaty but ministers are reviewing the human rights law to make it easier to deport people who have no right to be in the UK.

Deportation attempts

Several deportation attempts have been halted by how article eight of the ECHR, the right to private and family life, has been interpreted in UK law.

Article three, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, is also being looked at in immigration and extradition cases.

The Conservatives have promised to leave the ECHR if they win the next election, saying that “lawfare”, including lawyers using the ECHR to stop deportation attempts, has “frustrated the country’s efforts to secure its borders and deport those with no right to be here”.

Reform UK has also said it would leave the treaty as part of plans to tackle immigration.

Party leader Nigel Farage’s bid to bring forward legislation for the UK to leave the ECHR, which he said was “unfinished business” of Brexit, was blocked by MPs last Wednesday.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey opposed the move, saying the ECHR protects “the very people who need it most”.

Russia

Critics of quitting the treaty also say it would jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement, which was signed as part of the peace process to end the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and strip UK citizens of fundamental rights.

The only other country to leave the ECHR is Russia, which was expelled in 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine.

The treaty was first signed on November 4, 1950, and came into force on September 3, 1953.

It was the first legally-binding instrument to guarantee certain rights and freedoms set out under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Some 46 states remain signatories.

Harm

Naomi Smith, chief executive of the campaign group Best for Britain, said: “The public have seen the harm leaving European institutions has done to Britain and they recognise calls to leave the ECHR are just asking for even more damage: to all our rights, our freedoms, and our international reputation.

“We must not allow Reform UK and the Tories’ misleading attempts to demonise human rights protections to gain media traction when, in truth, the public strongly wants to maintain the high standards which keep us all safer.”