Nigel Farage is wrong about the European Convention on Human Rights

Nigel Farage’s Brexit catastrophe was sold as a way to reduce immigration – but it hasn’t done so. Instead, it’s carried enormous economic and social costs. Now, Reform is taking aim at the European Convention on Human Rights. “This,” it says, “is how we reduce immigration.” But is this reality?

In short no, not remotely. Here are the facts.

Under the European Convention on Human Rights, states are free to set their own immigration policies, and neither the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), nor the European Court of Human Rights (which applies the Convention) dictates what a state’s immigration policy should be.

The ECHR does not provide a right for people to enter or remain in a country of which they are not a national, or a right to claim asylum. 

The truth is that the European Court of Human Rights rarely rules against the UK on immigration issues at all. Since 1980, there have been only 29 UK cases at the Court that have concerned either deportation or extradition, and the Court ruled with the UK in 13 of these. 

The Human Rights Act (1998) incorporated ECHR rights into UK law, under the aim to “bring rights home” and make it cheaper and easier for claimants to use the Convention without having to go to Strasbourg. 

But even under the Human Rights Act, successful claims to stay in the UK are rare. In 2024, only 3790 people won at immigration tribunal under claims related to the Human Rights Act. That’s around 0.4% compared to the total inward immigration last year of 948000.

So, the truth is very few immigration cases ever rely on human rights in the first place. And the evidence shows that even fewer succeed. What is it, then, that Farage is really coming after?

The media very rarely focuses on the importance of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act in our everyday life, and especially not the impacts of leaving. 

Leaving the ECHR would breach the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which could threaten the peace settlement, as well as putting the UK in breach of the Brexit agreement with the EU. The EU has said that this would lead to them dropping certain parts of the agreement, including extraditing criminals to be tried in the UK.

Certain rights under the ECHR are also recognised in British common law, but the ECHR has a more extensive protection of human rights.

The common law system that existed before the Human Rights Act and European Court oversight offered no protection against teachers physically disciplining students or against discrimination that barred gay people from the military. If the UK left the ECHR, citizens would lose their right to seek justice at the European Court when British courts prove unable or unwilling to rectify breaches of their fundamental rights.

Nigel Farage plans to strip us of our fundamental rights in order to stop a tiny number of immigration claims and judgements from the ECHR. The media is helping him on this mission by allowing a constant drumbeat of misleading claims to enter the public consciousness.