UK Attorney General Refuses to Rule out Withdrawing From ECHR

Attorney General Suella Braverman during a regional Cabinet meeting at Middleport Pottery in Stoke on Trent, England, on May 12, 2022. Oli Scarff/PA

Attorney General Suella Braverman has refused to rule out Britain withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) after a flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda was halted at the last moment.

Braverman said “all options are on the table” and said many people would be “frustrated” about a court in Strasbourg giving a ruling which effectively grounded the plane on Tuesday night.

She told the BBC’s “World At One” programme: “The government has been clear in the media aftermath of the ruling issued by the European Court of Human Rights that all options are on the table. So we’re not ruling anything in and we’re not ruling anything out.”

Braverman, who returned to the post in September after going on maternity leave to have her second child, said, “It’s a very frustrating situation that we find ourselves in… many people will have assumed that we took control back of our borders when we left the European Union.”

She described the ECHR ruling as a “setback” and added, “We are definitely open to assessing all options available as to what our relationship should be going forward.”

Britain was one of the first nations to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights in 1951, six years after a world war which devastated Europe and involved widespread atrocities.

The convention includes the “prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment,” the “right to a fair trial,” “the right to private and family life,” and the “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.”

In the House of Commons the Conservative MP Alex Stafford asked: “Can the home secretary confirm that despite this despicable ruling from the foreign European Court of Justice [sic] that we are committed to relocating illegal immigrants to Rwanda and when can we look forward to—in Rother Valley—wheels down regarding the first flight?”

Home Secretary Priti Patel thanked Stafford for his “enthusiasm for this government’s work and policy when it comes to removals and deportation” and insisted the Rwanda policy was “lawful.”

Labour MP Stella Creasy told the Commons: “To hear the home secretary talk, you would think that the European Court of Human Rights wasn’t part of this country’s legal processes. And the reason it is, and it’s a very good libertarian reason, is that one of its founders said, is that the European Court will be set up so that cases of the violations of the rights of our own body of 12 nations might be brought for judgment in the civilised world.

“Wise words about protecting citizens from overbearing governments who seek to deny their most basic rights.”