L

Lord Lilley (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 17 July 2025

Debate

European Convention on Human Rights

Contribution

Does the Minister accept that the Government’s proposal, spelled out in its immigration White Paper, to legislate to tell the courts how to interpret the European Convention on Human Rights as it affects immigrants destroys the whole rationale for the ECHR? That rationale is based on the belief that only judges—unaffected by political considerations and unaccountable to Parliament or the electorate—can determine the true meaning in detail of the vague, abstract rights listed in the convention. Once Parliament takes back control of spelling out our rights in statute—as it should, as it did for 700 years and as the Government now propose it will in future—the original case for adhering to the ECHR will evaporate.

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