The courts' interpretation of human rights law must come under government scrutiny, the prime minister said today. In broadcast interviews following his party conference speech - which contained no explicit mention of the European Convention on Human Rights - Sir Keir Starmer said 'we need to look again at the interpretation' of international laws by UK courts.

In a reference to widely reported court rulings blocking deportations on human rights grounds, Starmer said said there is a difference between deporting someone to summary execution and sending them to a country with a different level of healthcare or prison conditions. 

Laws must be 'applied in the circumstances as they are now', he told the BBC Today programme, noting that countries are experiencing 'mass migration in a way that we have not seen in previous years'.

As well as Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR, Starmer pointed to the UN’s Refugee Convention, the Torture Convention and Convention on the Rights of the Child as potential barriers to deportations. 

In an interview with GB News, the prime minister blamed the surge in the number of illegal Channel crossings on Brexit and departure from the Dublin convention on asylum. 'I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that,’ Starmer said. 

The topic of departure from, or reform of, the European Convention on Human Rights is expected to feature strongly in next week's Conservative Party conference in Manchester.