European Convention on Human Rights turns 75

The European Convention on Human Rights celebrates its 75th birthday today with UK membership a topic of mainstream political debate for the first time in its history. 

Human rights campaign group Liberty marked the 75th anniversary of the first 12 signatures on the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms with a joint statement from nearly 300 organisations highlighting ‘the many ways the convention has helped ordinary people’. The 292 signatories include law firms as well as campaign groups such as the End Violence Against Women Coalition. 

Sam Grant, Liberty's director of external relations, said: ‘For decades our human rights laws have underpinned all of our daily lives by giving us the ability to speak freely, love who we want, and live in peace. These rights were hard-won and we must not allow governments now or in the future to take them away.’

Meanwhile former Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury spoke on the convention at his inaugural 'Justice for All' speech last week. 'It was the first instrument to give effect to certain rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and make them binding,' he said.

Judges play a crucial role in interpreting the convention, Lord Neuberger said: ‘Judges have to be involved in deciding the contents of the human rights and whether the human right has been infringed. No good giving people rights if they can’t enforce them and the only effective way rights can be interrupted and enforced is by independent tribunals. It would be a travesty if the government decided such cases because most human rights cases are against the government and if politicians do not like the way judges are developing the law, they can change the law through parliament thereby overriding any judicial decision.'

On the question of departing from the convention, he said: 'It may be a cheap point, but I would suggest much is revealed about you by the company that you keep and if we left the ECHR we would be joining Russia and Belarus which are currently the only two European countries who are not party to the convention.'

Possible departure was the subject of a vigorous House of Commons exchange last week between Reform leader Nigel Farage and his Liberal Democrat opposite number Ed Davey. Introducing the European Convention on Human Rights (Withdrawal) Bill under the '10-minute' rule, Farage said withdrawal would 'restore the power of this parliament'. Responding, Davey said that 'leaving the convention would be another nail in the coffin of Britain’s unique soft power'. 

The bill was defeated by 154 votes to 96. However one legal academic commentator observed that the fact that opponents turned up to vote on a measure that had no chance of becoming law showed that the debate has entered the mainstream. In an article for the Spectator, Professor Andrew Tettenborn of Swansea University wrote: 'Human rights lawyers may not like it, but there is now no going back to the days of passive acceptance of the ECHR as a fact of life.'

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