European Convention on Human Rights: 75th Anniversary

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To move that this House takes note of the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as we mark the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights, I thank my noble friends on the Cross Benches for selecting the Motion and express my gratitude to the many distinguished Members from all parts of your Lordships’ House who are participating in this debate. I also thank the Library and the many organisations which have sent briefing material, from the Law Society to the International Bar Association to Policy Exchange.

The Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard said:

“Life must be understood backwards; but … it must be lived forwards”.


Following Kierkegaard’s advice, I will begin by looking back and recalling the convention’s genesis and achievements, and then I will say something about its future.

In 2013, I opened another Cross-Bench debate marking the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recalling that it grew out of the egregious disregard and contempt for human rights that had resulted in barbarous acts and outraged the conscience of mankind. Eleanor Roosevelt, a key figure in crafting the 1948 universal declaration, described it as a “Magna Carta for all” people. It helped to inspire the European convention; both are foundation stones intended to be for all people and not available for selective enforcement according to culture, tradition or convenience. They should be seen as much as a declaration of human dignity as a declaration of human rights.

In the aftermath of the two world wars, which both began in Europe and which claimed the lives of some 77 million people—and in the same continent where another war rages today—a formidable array of political leaders showed extraordinary zeal and exemplary commitment in creating architecture to uphold the rule of law. Intrinsic to that were international covenants, many of which focused on human rights. In 1946, those barbarous acts which had outraged the conscience of the world prompted Winston Churchill to set out the case for a new international order based on the rule of law and human rights. Outraged consciences led to practical actions.

Lawyers such as Raphael Lemkin, 49 of whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, bequeathed the 1948 genocide convention, while Sir Hersch Lauterpacht developed the legal concept of crimes against humanity. At Nuremberg, Lauterpacht helped draft the speech of the British prosecutor Hartley Shawcross—the Labour Member of Parliament for St Helens and later Lord Shawcross—who in turn collaborated with Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Liverpool West Derby and later the first Earl of Kilmuir—in the prosecution of Nazi war crimes after World War II. He played a significant role too in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights.

The agenda had been set in Missouri, by Winston Churchill in March 1946, where, flanked by President Truman, he famously remarked that an iron curtain had descended across Europe. He insisted:

“We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man”.


Two years later, speaking in The Hague, he presided at a grand congress of 800 delegates and said:

“In the centre of our movement stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law”.


The congress issued a message to Europeans calling for a charter of human rights and

“a Court of Justice with adequate sanctions for the implementation of this Charter”,

leading, in 1950, to 15 European nations signing the convention, with Britain the first to ratify it in 1951.

The text was crafted largely by a team of Oxford and Cambridge professors headed by Maxwell Fyfe. Other British politicians involved in the drafting of the ECHR included Harold Macmillan, Samuel Hoare and Ernest Bevin. The signatories described their convention as a mechanism for

“enforcement of certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration”.

Churchill wanted

“moral concepts … able to win the respect and recognition of mankind”,

urging lawmakers:

“Let there be justice, mercy, and freedom”.


Churchill envisaged a Strasbourg court before which violations

“in our own body of … nations might be brought to the judgment of the civilised world”.

In a ringing endorsement, the Daily Telegraph said the convention was

“the turning point when the free peoples of Europe rejected enslavement in the communist system and defeated all attempts to poison and destroy their democratic traditions from within”.

The Times described it as

“a crucial step towards safeguarding fundamental freedoms and promoting a common European heritage of justice and the rule of law”.

The convention has created a common legal space for over 700 million citizens, prohibiting, among other things, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, slavery and forced labour, and arbitrary or unlawful detention. Its 14 articles protect basic rights, from the right to life to the rights to privacy, conscience and religion, freedom of expression, a fair trial, family life, and more.

The UK subsequently ratified protocols to the convention on the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, and three additional rights: the right to free enjoyment of property, the right to education and the right to free and fair elections. Parties to the convention undertake to secure convention rights and freedoms to everyone within their jurisdiction, underpinned by the creation of the European Court of Human Rights, which deals with individual and interstate relations.

During the years following its creation, the convention commanded widespread cross-party support. Lord Chancellors such as Viscount Hailsham described it as part of the

“armoury of weapons against elective dictatorship”.

Another Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, said that pulling out of the convention was “xenophobic and legal nonsense”. On the Liberal SDP benches, notably Lords Wade, Grimond and Jenkins of Hillhead, and Baroness Williams of Crosby were lifelong supporters of the ECHR.

Margaret Thatcher declared that the UK was

“committed to, and supported, the principles of human rights”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/7/1989; col. 252.]

in the ECHR. Sir John Major reiterated this commitment, and in 1998, Tony Blair incorporated the rights and liberties enshrined in the convention in the Human Rights Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, told this House that the Act

“does not create new human rights or take any existing human rights away. It provides better and easier access to rights which already exist”.—[Official Report, 5/2/1998; col. 755.]

The 1998 Act was described simply as “bringing rights home”. Beyond our home, the ECHR provides reassurance to everyone living and travelling in the Council of Europe area, that we share similar, enforceable human rights standards.

Notwithstanding recent calls to leave the ECHR, last November, this Government said they remained “fully committed” to the ECHR and to

“the important role that multilateral organisations like the Council of Europe play in upholding it”.

Of course, the Council of Europe pre-dates the European Union and has no connection to it. Some 19 member states of the Council of Europe, including the United Kingdom, are not members of the European Union; Russia was expelled because of its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The ECHR and the Council of Europe are inextricably bound together. Leaving the convention clearly means leaving the Council of Europe. Sir Jonathan Jones KC, a former Treasury solicitor and Permanent Secretary of the Government Legal Department, says that ECHR withdrawal would

“involve leaving the Council of Europe, which is responsible for the convention”.

A resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe states that

“accession to the Council of Europe must go together with becoming a party to the European Convention on Human Rights”,

while the European Court of Human Rights insists:

“Today more than ever the Convention is the cornerstone of the Council of Europe, and any State wishing to become a member of the organisation must sign and ratify it”.


Last month, Theodoros Rousopoulos, the current president of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, gave a Lord Speaker’s Lecture. We heard him pay tribute to the commitment and high-level contribution of the United Kingdom parliamentary delegation led by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig. To those who today will demand that we leave the ECHR, and therefore the Council of Europe, I would simply ask them to tell us which rights in the convention they object to. Do we really want to join Belarus and Russia as the only countries not part of any pan-European body?

In 2001, Parliament created the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I have the honour to chair—although today, I speak for myself and not the committee. The committee has a remit to examine matters relating to human rights in the UK and it has functioned historically as a champion for convention rights.

The JCHR pays close attention to the cases before the European court, the judges of which are elected by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. We have noted the role of the convention and the court; for example, in ending the ban on gay people in the military, and homosexual criminalisation in Northern Ireland; in prohibiting the retention for life of DNA samples of innocent people; on indiscriminate phone tapping; on the plight of the Sunday Times, which was prohibited from publishing information about thalidomide; on the protection of vulnerable victims of domestic violence; on the combating of racism; and on the degrading punishment of a teenager in the Isle of Man.

Among our current JCHR inquiries, we are examining the failure to prosecute UK nationals who took part in the genocide in Iraq, and transnational repression and forced labour in supply chains. Previous inquiries have included reform of the Human Rights Act and the right to family life. Last week, we held a round table on the Mental Health Bill, where we heard stories of detention and incarceration. Earlier this week, I met Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to discuss what we actually mean by human rights and how deeply they are connected to the laws we proclaim, the conventions we have signed, and the traditions of liberty and freedom represented by this place. The European Convention on Human Rights is an essential part of that tradition. Malcolm Bishop KC, writing in the New Law Journal, says that

“the Convention is now firmly embedded in the common law and an impressive corpus of jurisprudence has emerged, which, in my opinion, has made this country a better place”.

I agree.

To its detractors, and for the record, in 2024 the court gave just two judgments on the merits of cases involving the United Kingdom. A violation was found in one case and no violation was found in the other. In a commentary earlier this week, Joshua Rozenberg forensically addressed the caricatures and misattributions which are often wrongly laid at the door of the ECHR. By population, the UK has the lowest number of applications of all member states: three per million people, while for all states combined it was 47.4 per million. Of course, the reason there are so few UK cases is that we broadly obey the ECHR.

Those who want to reduce UK legal standards—some even want to tear up the Human Rights Act—would vandalise our constitutional settlement. This and leaving the convention in a fit of pique, rather than engaging with and reforming it, is not worthy of this country or those who entrusted this extraordinary legacy to us.

At the outset, I recalled Kierkegaard’s thought that life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards. Institutions and conventions are not set in stone. There is always scope for political debate and greater definition of the respective roles of parliaments and judges around controversial issues such as border control, which the JCHR will examine. However, to throw away all the gains would make no sense and merely play into the hands of dictators and enemies of democracy. We are experiencing war in Europe, along with contempt and disregard for international law and institutions, including despicable attacks on the International Criminal Court. We see the rise of autocracies with global reach, even with reach into the UK through transnational repression by hostile states. Rights and freedoms are under assault from within and without.

In this context, we are therefore right to recall the spirit which, 75 years ago, animated remarkable leaders. We are entitled to have pride in the significant British contribution to creating both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and genuine pride in the development of human rights, international law and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. To defend this legacy, we must become far more robust in the public domain—in our schools and universities—in setting out the patriotic case for these shared fundamental values.

In this 75th anniversary year of the European Convention on Human Rights, we are entitled to look back on what was achieved in the ruins of Europe and out of the ashes of Auschwitz. We must insist that those concerns remain vitally relevant to this day and that they are crucial to our future. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, referred to his childhood, when I was his family’s constituency Member of Parliament in Liverpool. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, in her reply to the debate referred to something which deeply affected me during my time as a Member of Parliament; I never expected to have to visit families whose children had died at a football match, as they had done at Hillsborough.

So I have been enormously grateful for the effect of the European convention in helping to shift the law, and to the Government for the commitment they gave at the general election to enact the so-called Hillsborough law. It is an issue the Joint Committee on Human Rights has engaged with. Indeed, we recently published correspondence between the committee and the Government on the duty of candour. It is a good example of how events that take place here in our own jurisdiction can have implications elsewhere, and of how they can be affected from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and from person to person.

Some very kind words have been said by noble Lords today, not least about my longevity. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and to the noble Lord, Lord Rook, who said that he hoped one day to grow up to be like me. I do not wish that on him or anybody else. I feel a bit like Methuselah at the end of today’s debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, for whom I have great fondness and admiration, made a very good speech about why we should keep our feet firmly on the ground and never lose sight of the human impact of the decisions that we make. He told us that he had been to the Supreme Court and felt as though he had been surrounded by stars in the galaxy. You do not need to go all the way to the Supreme Court to feel as though you are surrounded by stars in the galaxy. I pay particular tribute to some of the distinguished and celebrated Peers who have spoken in today’s debate. These have been wise voices, and we would be foolish not to study carefully what has been said to us from all sides of the argument. This debate has been worthy of the anniversary, but also worthy of your Lordships’ House.

Obviously, I will not try to respond to every speech, so I will be brief. Reference was made to Article 3. My noble friend Lord Carter was right that even if we did not have the ECHR, the 1951 convention on the treatment of refugees would still be in place. We were also cautioned by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and others about the dangers of building a whole argument on one or two cases—such as the so-called chicken nuggets case, which was referred to. Noble Lords should go away and read Joshua Rozenberg’s article this week, where he reminds us that in that case, a lower-tier tribunal got it wrong and an upper-tier tribunal got it right. He writes that the argument presented in that case will not prevent the deportation of someone who may be here illegally and therefore should not be resident in the United Kingdom. So let us not build a case for total deconstruction on cases such as that one. Again, a noble Lord reminded us—I think it was my noble friend Lord Hannay—that hard cases make bad law.

When you start to unravel and disrupt, it carries consequences, but that is not an argument against reform. I take the arguments that have been made today, particularly from the Conservative Benches, that this is not a static instrument which is incapable of reform. Things such as the Swiss case are for the Joint Committee on Human Rights to go back and look at and take evidence over. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, and I will agree on that, and will find ways for us to look at that kind of judgment and decide whether we are going too far in some circumstances—but that should not become an argument for the destruction of the European Convention on Human Rights. Confronted in our own generation by a new breed of dictators who again threaten the foundations of democracy, it would be sheer defeatism and an act of vandalism to abandon the legacy that has been entrusted to us.

I renew my thanks to everyone who has participated in today’s debate and, in closing this Cross-Bench debate marking the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights, I thank all those who have made such excellent contributions in your Lordships’ House.

Motion agreed.