'ECHR are not to blame for failed illegal immigration system - the Home Office are' - Jackie Doyle-Price
'Leaving the ECHR would give Putin a propaganda victory,' argues Jackie Doyle-Price
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As the runners and riders on the Conservative Party leadership election set out their stall one thing is clear. The ECHR has become a central focus of the battle.
Strasbourg has replaced Brussels as the bogeyman for Conservatives to show that our commitment to sovereignty and nationhood is as strong as ever.
I understand why. As a Member of Parliament, I handled scores of immigration cases. I met with many people who had managed to stay for years with appeal after appeal and no legal basis for their stay. We would see the same stories being trotted out as immigration lawyers earn a good living coaching their clients on what to say.
But the simple truth is that the responsibility for failing to manage illegal immigration sits with the Home Office. There aren’t enough removals. Blaming the ECHR simply allows a dysfunctional Home Office the ability to evade accountability for failure.
It's worth reminding ourselves why we have the ECHR. This year we commemorated the eighty-year anniversary of D-Day, the day that so many risked everything so that this country remained free and sovereign. Many paid with their lives.
With the first half of the twentieth century driven by two World Wars, our leaders recognised the need for a lasting peace.
The excesses of Nazism must never be allowed to happen again and nations across Eastern Europe needed to be protected from Communist extremism.
It is little wonder that Winston Churchill saw the advantages of Europe’s nations coming together to protect universal human rights.
Ah but that was then I hear you say. That was a different time. Well indeed, but are we really saying that the threat of extremism has gone forever? I think we took our eye off the ball after the Berlin Wall fell.
We need only look at Ukraine to see that Russian expansionism is alive and kicking. Across Europe we see politics moving to the right. We may feel we do not need the protection of the ECHR in our own country.
But in the interest of freedom and security, we cannot undermine the international frameworks for protecting human rights in a world that is so unstable.
If we were to join Russia and Belarus as the only European nations outside the ECHR we would give Putin a propaganda victory.
Why would we want to do that?
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This is not to say that Britain’s relationship with the ECHR is not in need of reform. It most certainly is. Labour’s Human Rights Act enshrined the ECHR into British law. It is this that has caused so much difficulty over the Rwanda policy.
It is why the Conservatives ran on a platform of replacing the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights as long ago as 2010. It was a policy that was dropped as part of the coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats and despite the best efforts of Dominic Raab has never been resurrected. It should be.
So, while I am all in favour of the contenders showing a bit of leg in the direction of bashing the ECHR, in the long term there is much more to be gained from reforming our relationship with the ECHR than simply leaving it.
And as for those that want a referendum? Piffle. We are a representative democracy, and we elect politicians to make decisions. Our recent experience of referendums is that they polarise and divide.
The best decisions are rarely a binary choice between black and white. The best solutions are often to be found in the shades of grey. The ECHR is one such example. Reform, do not leave is the solution.