Objective: To restore the UK’s legal sovereignty by withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and replacing it with a new British Bill of Rights that better reflects the values and interests of the British people.
The Problem: The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, has increasingly undermined the UK’s ability to control its own borders, tackle serious crime, and implement policies that protect national security. By prioritising the rights of criminals, foreign offenders, and illegal immigrants over the safety and security of British citizens, the ECHR has become a barrier to effective governance.
Despite Brexit, the ECHR continues to limit our ability to make independent decisions on key issues such as deporting dangerous criminals, addressing illegal immigration, and ensuring that our laws reflect the will of the British people.
Solution:
Withdrawal from the ECHR: The UK will formally withdraw from the ECHR, reclaiming full control over our legal and judicial systems. This move will allow Parliament to make final decisions on human rights issues without interference from foreign courts.
Introduction of a British Bill of Rights: We will introduce a new British Bill of Rights, enshrining fundamental liberties while ensuring that these rights align with British values, traditions, and democratic principles. This Bill will guarantee essential rights such as freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, and protections against unlawful detention, while also ensuring that public safety and national security are prioritised.
Strengthening National Security and Border Control: By leaving the ECHR, we will regain the ability to deport foreign criminals and remove illegal migrants who have no right to remain in the UK. This will prevent the exploitation of ECHR provisions that currently allow individuals to block their removal on dubious grounds.
Reforming Judicial Accountability: Our new system will prioritise the UK Supreme Court as the ultimate authority on human rights matters, ensuring that decisions are made by judges accountable to the British public, not by an unaccountable foreign court.
Key Benefits:
Restores UK sovereignty and control over domestic legal matters.
Protects the public by ensuring that national security and border control are not compromised by external rulings.
Guarantees fundamental rights through a British Bill of Rights tailored to our democratic values.
Reduces legal loopholes exploited by criminals and illegal immigrants to avoid deportation.
Call to Action:
We believe in putting the British people first and ensuring that our laws reflect the will of the nation. Support our plan to withdraw from the ECHR and replace it with a robust, homegrown Bill of Rights. Join the conversation at Policies for the People to help shape the future of our nation’s sovereignty and security.
Its a must , as long as it doesn’t evolve like the activists grabbed changes to the highway code that gives priority to step in the road or over zellis cycles rule the roads…
I agree in principle with everything that you gave said.
My only concern is that our current courts seem to have a fairly fluid approach to how they choose to enforce legislation.
The idea of rights has always made me nervous as it enshrines hierarchies before the law. It generally makes little use of the opposite of rights, that is responsibilities.
Beyond the idea of enshrining the ways in which the state will leave us alone, i think we need to be careful with rights.
Completely agree, 100%. We need to enforce negative rights, things that we are NOT allowed to do. Positive rights always expand and expand and, as in recent times, tend towards tyranising the law abiding majority. The validity of negative rights are much easier to see (do not kill, steal, etc are clear whereas islamaphobia is not and should be junked) but positive rights sound good but lead to men in women’s bathrooms …
While I agree with withdrawal from the ECHR, I do not agree with bringing forward a new Bill of Rights. The desire to bring in yet more legislation is the underlying problem here. While I fully agree on the importance of ancient English liberties such as freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, and protections against unlawful detention, as mentioned, these rights already exist. The reason they have been diminished or thwarted in recent years is because of the enactment of new laws. Freedom of speech is limited by equality legislation, protection against unlawful detention has been reduced because of post 9/11 anti-terrorist legislation, etc. etc. I could go on!
The focus must be on repealing the legislative obstacles to our pre-existing rights and liberties, and most of those can be found in the past quarter century.
One of the features of judicial arguments in recent times has been reconciling clashes between competing rights. This has arisen in part from the legal positivism that underpins the liberal world view. We must resist the temptation to ape this. Peel back the layers rather than add more!
One reason is that the ECHR is the basis for the Good Friday Agreement.
Withdrawing from the ECHR would likely breach the GFA, as it would remove a key pillar of the agreement. Experts have long warned that this could destabilize the peace. A 2024 BBC report notes that ECHR withdrawal could risk reigniting sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
Legally, the UK could remain a signatory to the ECHR but limit its application to Northern Ireland, while introducing a separate constitutional bill of rights for England, Scotland, and Wales. But the ECHR is an international treaty that applies to the entire jurisdiction of a signatory state. So this sort of territorial application is likely not possible, and it would lead to other countries cherry-picking as well, thereby undermining the ECHR.
Finally, because of the UK’s principle of parliamentary sovereignty, a British Bill of Rights wouldn’t provide the same level of protection as the ECHR. Parliamentary sovereignty means that the UK Parliament is the supreme legal authority and can make, amend, or repeal any law, with no higher authority (like a constitutional court) to overrule it. This would make rights protections less secure than under the ECHR, which is an international treaty binding the UK under international law.
We’d need something like a constitution to ensure people’s rights aren’t eroded by Parliament. At that point we’re talking about upending the whole thing (personally, I’m in favour of abolishing the monarchy and becoming a constitutional republic).
If we remove a lot of legislation going back to the dreadful Blair/Brown changes, I think those rights already exist. I’m not an expert. There is apparently a complication in the withdrawal agreement, that we have to remain in the ECHR. but let us take a leaf out of mr Orban’s book, where we ignore this sort of thing, as have almost all European countries in re-establishing frontier controls against EU rules, and, having withdrawn from European court’s influence, Supreme Court, crazy UN bodies which have become politicised, the Hague court, we reclaim the sovereignty of Parliament. Then we have to ensure our parliamentarians actually believe in the UK, equality under the law, and are tough enough to do the right thing in the interest of the UK.
We won the Scottish referendum in 2014 and we won the European Union in 2016 this gives us a mandate democratically that protects our British Culture should be written into Scots law and UK law (British Law) only all nation together England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales can collectively decide the outcome of a neverenda or referendum not separatist parties (alt-lefd) such as sinn fein, SNP, Plaid Cymru
The Commonwealth must have a future vote before rejoining the European Union, must be a majority of the Commonwealth Population and all Commonwealth countries must agree in a vote given to their citizens in their country
I like this a lot but i think you need stronger justification to leave the ECHR. I will shortly post a similar offering butvthat goes into a bit more detail and solves more than this specifc problem.
point 1 is quite valid. Great stuff. Our problem with Starmer getting away with the dreadful deal he just negotiated is that, subsequent to leaving the EU, we passed no legislation to set a very high bar to establishing closer relations with the EU, particularly at the expense of restricting our rights to deal directly with other countries. Why? Perhaps because the Conservative government was not convinced they actually wanted the Brexit for which we had voted. Perhaps our only option is a new party that is clear on these subjects, which the Reform party is not (I may be wrong?). However, the voters may be a little bored by all these political shenanigans, so the new party will have to be an amazing consortium of giants. I hope Ben Habib can get Rupert Lowe on board, and some top notch giants we can all trust to run this country well
