Labour’s law chief has mounted a passionate defence of the European human rights system amid calls for the UK to pull out of it altogether to tackle illegal migration.
Attorney General Lord Hermer said the UK should use the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights to ‘celebrate’ what it does.
Appearing in front of the Joint Committee on Human Rights he also said that Britain should take ‘national pride’ in having played a central role in setting it up under the leadership of Sir Winston Churchill.
Opposition critics including Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and some Tories want the UK to withdraw from the system, arguing it prevents ministers from expelling migrants.
Ministers are reviewing how Article Eight of the ECHR – the right to family life – applies to migration law.
Lord Hermer said it was right to carry out the review but hit out at ‘disinformation’ about a specific case where it was reported an Albanian man was able to remain partly because of his young son’s aversion to foreign chicken nuggets.’
And he warned that if the UK quit the ECHR there was ‘no hope’ of achieving deals with foreign countries to take back migrants.
Attorney General Lord Hermer said the UK should use the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights to ‘celebrate’ what it does.
Opposition critics including Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and some Tories want the UK to withdraw from the system, arguing it prevents ministers from expelling migrants.
He told peers and MPs: ‘On this 75th anniversary of the creation of the convention … this is a moment to celebrate it.
‘It is also a moment to reflect on it, to reflect upon the nature of the values that are contained in the convention, which I think are as relevant today as they were at the time when it was formed.
‘It is also a point of national pride; the Council of Europe created under the leadership of Winston Churchill and many of the provisions drafted by British lawyers, not least (later Tory home secretary) David Maxwell Fyfe.
‘Although the convention reflects universal values they are a reflection of great, long-standing British value enshrined in our common law.’
The Attorney General said the Home Secretary is ‘entirely right’ to conduct a review into the use of Article 8 in how it is applied to migration cases.
He said there has been a number of decisions reported at immigration tribunals on the basis of Article 8, the right to private and family life, that are ‘capable of suggesting that it is not being applied properly or appropriately.’
He told the committee: ‘I want to make clear in all my comments about decisions of any court that I am categorically not criticising judges.
‘I think there is real merit in checking that Article 8 is being properly understood and applied, because, as I’ve said, you can have a very, very robust but fair process in asylum and immigration context that is entirely compatible with Article 8.
‘We need to just check that there’s a right calibration on casework decisions.
‘We may also need to check…that government is being robust in appealing decisions that we don’t like, that there’s a litigation strategy that meets that aim.’
He added: ‘There is clearly a lot of information, misinformation, that is being whipped up in the context of asylum and immigration in particular, Article 8,’ he said.
‘Many of you will have heard banded around the idea that the courts have allowed a foreign national offender to stay here because his child will miss chicken McNuggets.
‘That is doing the rounds. What is not doing the rounds is that that case went to the Upper Tribunal, who categorically rejected that as an Article 8 argument. They rejected the claim.
‘Courts are always going to make mistakes. That’s why we have appeal courts, and that’s what’s happened here.’
