Tory backlash over European court’s climate ruling
THE Energy Secretary has led a Tory backlash against the European Court of Human Rights after it issued a landmark ruling that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.
Claire Coutinho said she was “concerned” that Strasbourg judges were taking over decisions best made by elected politicians. Senior Tories urged Rishi Sunak to take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the wake of the ruling.
They accused the court of acting in a “profoundly undemocratic” way and being “bent out of shape” by “progressive” activists and politicians.
The row came as an exclusive opinion poll for The Telegraph revealed that half of Conservative voters believe the UK should leave the ECHR.
Some 49 per cent of people who backed the party at the 2019 general election wanted to quit the convention, according to Savanta polling, with 35 per cent wanting to stay. In 2022, polling had found that 43 per cent of Tory voters favoured quitting the ECHR.
Last week, Mr Sunak raised the possibility of the UK leaving it if the Strasbourg court continued to block his delayed plans to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda. Yesterday, Ms Coutinho said: “I’m concerned by the Strasbourg court decision. How we tackle climate change affects our economic, energy and national security. Elected politicians are best placed to make those decisions.”
She made the comments after, in the first judgment of its kind, Strasbourg judges ruled that the human rights of a group of elderly Swiss women had been violated by the failure of their government to act quickly enough to tackle climate change.
The court found the Swiss state had breached Article 8 of the ECHR, which guarantees the “right to respect for private and family life”.
The ruling is binding to states that are signatories to the convention, such as the UK, and will trickle down to influence the law in 46 countries in Europe, including Britain.
It means individuals and groups could sue for a breach of their human rights if the UK Government fails to meet its net zero or environmental targets.
In the UK, attempts to make such cases on the basis of the ECHR have, until now, not succeeded. However, in a landmark net-zero case last year, the High Court suggested UK courts would “keep pace with Strasbourg jurisprudence” as it continued to evolve.
Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, said yesterday: “This is the latest example of the expansionist doctrine practised by the justices of the Strasbourg court. By viewing the ECHR as a ‘living document’ they continually stretch its reach in ways no signatory ever agreed to. It’s profoundly undemocratic.”
Danny Kruger, the co-chairman of the New Conservatives group of MPS, urged the Government to quit the convention, saying: “The Strasbourg court is setting itself up as a legislator in place of elected governments. The ECHR has been bent out of shape by activists and politicians who want to seem progressive and internationalist by junking both nations and democracy. We should leave.” Sarah Dines, a former Home Office minister,
said: “It is yet another manifestation of woke legal fantasists further corrupting the ECHR in an effort to force unacceptable legal decisions upon the populations of ECHR signatory states.
“The European Court of Human Rights is now little more than an NGO serving the interests of unelected and unaccountable NGOS.”
The concerns were not restricted to politicians. In a dissenting opinion to the majority judgment, the British judge in Strasbourg said: “I fear that, in this judgment, the majority has gone beyond what it is legitimate and permissible for this court to do and, unfortunately, in doing so, may well have achieved exactly the opposite effect to what was intended.”
The Savanta survey on ECHR membership was part of the Telegraphsavanta poll tracker, which is published every Tuesday evening throughout this election year. Its findings also offer a glimmer of hope to the Tories after a challenging few months. Labour’s lead has shrunk to 15 percentage points, down from 21 a fortnight ago.
The reason for the narrowing is unclear, but it is statistically significant.
Some 42 per cent of respondents said they would back Labour at a general election, down by three percentage points. The Tories were on 27 per cent, up three percentage points.