Calls to quit the European Convention on Human Rights are ‘troubling’ and ‘unnecessary’, former Supreme Court president Lady Hale said last night - suggesting that the government listen to the Green Party on 'concerns of real people'.
Hale was speaking at a panel discussion entitled ‘Protecting the ECHR and the rule of law’ at the London headquarters of campaign group Liberty alongside former Liberty director and now Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti.
Noting that the Conservatives and Reform have promised to pull the UK out of the convention, Hale said: ‘Now, we have even got wobbles in the current government. I find all of that troubling. It’s all so unnecessary,’ she said.
‘They are bothered about deportation of foreign national criminals. This is not a problem. The problem is getting countries to take people back. The convention does not stop you doing that.’ On asylum seekers, Hale said: ‘One can have various views about that. But the main problem with asylum seekers is not the [ECHR], it’s the Refugee Convention and the breadth of the Refugee Convention.’
Asked by Liberty director Akiko Hart, who moderated the discussion, why Labour is not making a ‘full-throated endorsement’ of the ECHR, Chakrabarti said: ‘I think it’s about the dilemma about how to respond to the risk, for example, of Reform. I’m of the view you cannot out-reform Reform.’
Hale suggested Labour listen to the speech made by the Greens’ new MP Hannah Spencer after she won the Gorton and Denton by-election – a speech that ‘could have been said by the Labour candidate. [Spencer] was talking to the real concerns of real people’, Hale said.
All politicians, Hale added, should believe in the rule of law and independence of the judiciary. ‘You can have arguments about migration. But the basics should not be up for argument.’
12 Readers' comments