\n<\/p>\n
Taking the UK out of a European human rights treaty to quell rightwing anger over immigration would be a mistake, the new chair of Britain\u2019s equalities watchdog has said, as she warned against the demonisation of people who migrate to the UK.<\/p>\n
Mary-Ann Stephenson, who became head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in December, said the European convention on human rights was part of a framework that provides rights most people would agree were fundamental. But she said the tone of public conversation on it was often dangerous.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really important that we have honesty in the way that we talk about human rights, and that we also have a recognition that the demonisation of migrants \u2013 creating this idea that migration causes huge risks for the country \u2013 can make the lives not just of migrants to the UK, but of ethnic minority UK citizens, very, very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephenson noted a \u201creal risk of people using, quite often, cases where human rights arguments were made in court but were not successful\u201d when discussing the European convention on humanrights (ECHR).<\/p>\n
She pointed to research from the University of Oxford earlier this year that highlighted \u201cseveral high-profile examples of misleading coverage, including the so-called \u2018chicken nuggets\u2019 case \u2013 widely reported as the prevention of an individual\u2019s deportation on the basis of his child\u2019s dislike of foreign food, despite the decision not being based on this detail and having already been overturned\u201d.<\/p>\n
Political debate has ramped up around the UK\u2019s membership of the ECHR \u2013 often in relation to cases in which the government seeks to deport people. Some on the right have claimed the convention hampers those efforts. Both the Conservatives and Reform UK have said they would quit the international treaty.<\/p>\n
The Labour government is reviewing human rights law to make it easier to win deportation cases. Changes to article 3 \u2013 prohibition on torture or inhuman or degrading treatment \u2013 and article 8 \u2013 the right to family life \u2013 are included in the government\u2019s plans to overhaul the asylum system, which have both been relied on in high-profile cases.<\/p>\n
Stephenson, described the convention as \u201creally important\u201d because it was incorporated into the UK\u2019s Human Rights Act and said leaving would weaken the rights everyone depends on.<\/p>\n
She gave as examples the John Worboys black cab rapist case \u2013 in which the supreme court ruled police could be held liable for serious failures in their investigations \u2013 and another involving the threatened separation of an elderly couple when one needed to go into residential care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are all sorts of cases where most people would think \u2018that\u2019s the sort of thing we would want to see. Those are the sorts of rights we would want to have\u2019. And so I think leaving the European convention is a mistake. It weakens the rights that all of us depend on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the chief of the body that oversees the convention said member states had taken an \u201cimportant first step forward together\u201d in agreeing to look at reforms to tackle migration within its legal framework.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking the UK out of a European human rights treaty to quell rightwing anger over immigration would be a mistake, the new chair of Britain\u2019s equalities watchdog has said, as she warned against the demonisation of people who migrate to the UK. Mary-Ann Stephenson, who became head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2917,689,15273,11793,715,761,2081,438,8943,702,1060],"class_list":{"0":"post-38610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-asylum","9":"tag-chief","10":"tag-convention","11":"tag-equalities","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-human","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-leaving","16":"tag-mistake","17":"tag-rights","18":"tag-warns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}