New equalities chair warns against ‘demonisation of migrants’
The new chairwoman of Britain’s equalities watchdog has warned against the “demonisation of migrants” and said it would be “a mistake” for the UK to withdraw from a longstanding international treaty on human rights.
Political debate has ramped up this year around the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in relation to immigration cases in the UK. The convention – an international treaty – has drawn criticism from some on the right of politics who argue it hampers efforts to deport illegal migrants. Both the Conservatives and Reform UK have said they would quit it as part of efforts to tackle immigration. The Labour Government has said it will not leave the European treaty but ministers are reviewing human rights law to make it easier to deport people who have no right to be in the UK. Changes to Article 3 – prohibition on torture or inhuman or degrading treatment – and Article 8 – the right to family life – are included in the Government’s plans to overhaul the asylum system. Both articles have been used to prevent people with no right to be in the UK being sent back to their home countries. Mary-Ann Stephenson, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, described the convention as “really important” and said leaving would weaken the rights everyone depends on. The commission, of which she became chair at the beginning of December, monitors rights and freedoms across England, Scotland and Wales. In an interview with the Press Association, Ms Stephenson said of the convention: “It’s embedded in UK law through the Human Rights Act, and it provides rights that protect all of us.” She gave examples such as the John Worboys black cab rapist case which saw the Supreme Court rule that police can be held liable for serious failures in their investigations, and another involving the threatened separation of an elderly couple when one needed to go into residential care. She said these showed how necessary the Human Rights Act was in incorporating the convention rights into UK law. Ms Stephenson said: “These are all sorts of cases where most people would think that’s the sort of thing we would want to see. Those are the sorts of rights we would want to have. “And so I think leaving the European Convention is a mistake. It weakens the rights that all of us depend on.” She also noted a “real risk of people using, quite often, cases where human rights arguments were made in court but were not successful”. Ms Stephenson noted research from the University of Oxford earlier this year which highlighted “several high-profile examples of misleading coverage, including the so-called ‘chicken nuggets’ case – widely reported as the prevention of an individual’s deportation on the basis of his child’s dislike of foreign food, despite the decision not being based on this detail and having already been overturned”. She said: “I think it’s 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, the creating this idea that migration causes huge risks for the country can make the lives not just of migrants to the UK, but of ethnic minority UK citizens, very, very difficult.” Earlier this month the chief of the body that oversees the convention said member states had taken an “important first step forward together” in agreeing to look at reforming the treaty to tackle migration within its legal framework. Council of Europe secretary general Alain Berset said that the treaty, which he described as a “living instrument”, is possible to adapt and work will begin to adopt the new political declaration in Moldova in May 2026.
Published: by Radio NewsHub
