What Robert Jenrick gets wrong about the ECHR

Last night, during his first debate with Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick was keen to highlight his flagship policy on exiting the ECHR, using it as a dividing line to emphasise his anti-immigration credentials. He pitched the question as ‘leave or remain’. 

This is an unfortunate move on two fronts. First, leaving the ECHR is unlikely to have the practical effect he hopes in stopping the small boats, or combatting illegal immigration. Second, it risks looking like he is merely chasing the Reform vote and is uninterested in reuniting his fractured party.

On the legal question, anyone who has read the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Rwanda case will know that the ECHR was not the only issue which stopped the UK removing people claiming to be refugees.

There are also provisions in the UN Refugee Convention relating to ‘non-refoulement’ (which require that refugees are not returned to a country where their life, or freedom, would be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group or political opinion).