May keeps Britain tied to Europe’s human rights law
Tories drop election pledge to abandon ECHR over fears it would distract from Brexit talks
BRITAIN will be bound by European human rights laws for another five years with the Conservatives expected to abandon a pledge to withdraw the UK from the ECHR.
Theresa May is expected to make no mention in the Tory election manifesto of pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mrs May, who served as home secretary from 2010 to 2016, said last year she wanted to quit the ECHR, which for a time frustrated her plans to extradite Abu Qatada, the hate preacher.
She was expected to write the pledge into the Conservative manifesto, committing Britain to withdraw by the end of the next parliament, in 2022.
However, senior Government figures have told The Daily Telegraph they expect the Prime Minister to drop the commitment because it would be a major distraction for her Government from the Brexit negotiations.
It means Britain is now likely to be bound by European human rights laws for at least another five years. In other developments yesterday: Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, warned that Britain must “step up” to global threats in “this age of uncertainty”;
Labour’s election campaign appeared to be in freefall after Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, backed out of televised debates and a poll gave him his worst ever personal rating;
It was disclosed that Mrs May is today expected to head to Yorkshire to hold the biggest rally of the election campaign so far.
Last night Mrs May held a working dinner with Michel Barnier, Brexit negotiator for the European Commission, and Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, at Downing Street. A spokesman said afterwards that she reiterated Britain’s commitment to a “deep and special relationship” with the EU.
The European Convention on Human Rights is a post-war treaty setting out rights and freedoms and is separate from the European Union. Tony Blair’s Labour government wrote the legislation into the Human Rights Act in 1999.
Tory Eurosceptics have bitterly criticised the law because it gave judges in Strasbourg the ability to rule in Britain on issues such as a right to privacy and family life.
David Cameron had pledged to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, while remaining a signatory to the ECHR. Mrs May went further last year, saying the ECHR “can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals, and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights”.
It later emerged that she backed plans to “lift and shift” human rights enshrined in the European Convention and write them into UK law.
The Tory manifesto – due to be published in the week starting May 8 – was “locked” in terms of new ideas by aides on Tuesday. One senior minister said: “We have so much on our plate that we just don’t have enough time to do this. We have enough to do with Brexit, let alone the ECHR.”
A Cabinet minister said he feared that trying to withdraw from the ECHR would “screw up” negotiations with the European Union when Britain is trying to appear positive about the EU as the UK leaves. He said it would
project the wrong sort of “values” if Britain was trying to leave the European Convention at the same time as pulling out of the EU. A second Cabinet minister questioned why Mrs May would risk including the commitment when she wanted a clear five years to ensure a smooth Brexit.
But another source said the situation was “fluid at the moment, different people have different views on it” and that no final decisions had been taken.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former cabinet minister, said the news that the commitment might not be in the manifesto was “disappointing” but that he understood Mrs May’s thinking. “You don’t want to be fighting on too many fronts in Europe,” he said. Martin Howe QC, a senior Tory lawyer who drew up the plans for Mr Cameron, said he “fully understood why Brexit must be put first” but added: “They would be well advised to at least keep the option open of reforming human rights law and possibly withdrawing from the convention if that proves to be necessary.”
Five months ago, Jeremy Wright, the Attorney General, told MPs that the Government had “no quarrel with the content of the European Convention on Human Rights”, only with the way that it was applied. Mr Wright said that while “the Government is certainly committed to seeking to do something about that” ministers “have a few other things on our plate at the moment”.
A Conservative spokesman declined to comment.