The European Convention on Human Rights was formed in the wake of the Second World War, partly in response to the Holocaust and other horrors inflicted across Nazi-occupied Europe, and partly in reaction to the rise of totalitarian governments across the post-War Soviet bloc. British politicians and lawyers were among the chief architects of the Convention, and the UK was one of the first States to ratify it. We remain fully committed to protecting human rights both domestically and internationally as the essential underpinning of the liberties and democratic values that we all enjoy, and the ECHR plays an important role in that.

Our membership of the ECHR also facilitates and strengthens international co-operation on areas ranging from security to irregular migration. It is one of the foundations of peace and stability in Northern Ireland through its role in the Good Friday Agreement, it underpins law enforcement and judicial cooperation via the EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, and is also an important pillar of the devolution settlements. Since its introduction, the ECHR has made a positive difference to the lives and rights of those in the United Kingdom, including its role in the abolition of corporal punishment, ending the ban on LGBT+ people serving in the armed forces, and the continued abolition of the death penalty.

One of the ECHR’s most important provisions is the duty on states to protect an individual’s right to life. The families of the 97 football fans who lost their lives in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster relied on that right as they campaigned for the truth to obtain a new inquest, which concluded that the fans were unlawfully killed. Victims of the taxi-cab rapist John Worboys also used the ECHR to claim successfully that the Met Police had failed to investigate Worboys’ crimes effectively, and had thereby breached their ECHR rights to protection against ill-treatment.

Despite these two high-profile cases where victims of state failure were able to gain redress via the ECHR, the UK nevertheless has the lowest rate of applications to the European Court on Human Rights by population: in 2023 it was 3 applications per million persons in the UK. That compares to the rate for all Council of Europe member States combined, which was 47 per million people. In 2023, the European Court of Human Rights made only one adverse judgment against the United Kingdom out of the 176 applications assessed.

While the ECHR has played an important role in protecting the rights of UK citizens in the past, it is also true that no set of rules or multilateral institution is perfect; and neither the ECHR nor the European Court of Human Rights should be treated as impervious to change. Indeed, during the UK’s presidency of the Council of Europe in 2012, member states adopted a substantial package of reforms to the ECHR.

The Government’s 2025 Immigration White Paper (Restoring Control over the Immigration System) committed to bring forward legislation to strengthen the public interest test to make it clear that Parliament needs to be able to control our country’s borders and take back control of who comes to, and stays in the UK, striking the right balance between individual family rights and the wider public interest. The government will bring forward a major package of reforms to the asylum system before the end of the year. We believe that reforms can be introduced to deliver our migration and criminal justice priorities without having to leave the ECHR, and this will remain our priority over the coming period.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office