Human rights – countering misconceptions

The very notion of human rights seems increasingly to be getting a bad rap. The Human Rights Act (HRA), European Court of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) have all been targeted and blamed for… well, what exactly? For failing to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats? For denying the sovereignty of Parliament and flouting democratic accountability? Or for being interpreted too broadly and so generally getting ahead of themselves? A relatively small, but apparently influential, number of spokespeople, such as Lord Sumption, have been getting much coverage and traction for their negative narratives about human rights, but without any clear evidential basis, and often without the media facilitating adequate representation of opposing views.

Two reports recently published by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, at Oxford University, seek to make a rather more evidence-based contribution to the debate. Media analysis shows that human rights are most frequently discussed in the context of immigration control, which is the subject of the first report, The European Convention on Human Rights and Immigration Control in the UK: Informing the Public Debate (September 2025).

Human rights and immigration

The first Bonavero Institute report systematically examined news stories in the UK media during the first six months of 2025. The coverage focused primarily on immigration tribunal cases in which foreign national offenders invoked human rights grounds. Many of these news articles, and related opinion pieces, were based on misconceptions about UK immigration law, the appeals system and the role played by the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

Three types of misreporting of immigration tribunal cases were identified:

• reporting decisions which at the time of publication were no longer valid because they had been overturned on appeal;
• reporting arguments made by the parties as if they were decisive to the outcome of the case (when in fact they hadn’t been accepted by the judge); and
• presenting misleading accounts of evidence.

Undoubtedly, the most notorious example of the third type of misreporting is the ‘chicken nuggets’ case: it has repeatedly been asserted that Article 8 ECHR (the right to respect for private and family life) prevented the deportation of an Albanian man because his son couldn’t stomach foreign chicken nuggets. In fact, this was not the reason for the initial decision halting the deportation and in any event the decision had already been reversed at the time it was first reported. Nevertheless, Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, cited the case in a speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February 2025 as an example of how the ECHR ‘is weaponised by those who wish to erode our national identity and border security’.

More broadly, the authors establish that media coverage displays a lack of understanding of the role of the ECHR in relation to immigration policy. For example, the number of foreign national offenders who successfully appeal against deportation on human rights grounds alone is very small as a proportion of all sentenced foreign national offenders (around 0.73%, on the basis of the latest available figures for first-tier decisions).

There is also a mistaken perception about the influence of the ECtHR in this area. Judgments against the UK are very rare. The report shows that since 1980 there have been just 29 judgments in UK cases at the ECtHR which have concerned the removal of a foreign national. In 16 of those cases, the court found that a planned deportation or extradition would not breach the ECHR and therefore could go ahead. The court found a violation of the ECHR in the other 13 cases (four of which concerned Article 8). Furthermore, the court very rarely finds that government policies on immigration control breach the ECHR – in the same 45-year period, the court has found that the UK immigration rules violate the Convention on just three occasions.

The authors also note that the misreporting is exacerbated by the fact that the Home Office does not publish clear and accessible data on appeals by foreign national offenders.

The report concludes that these misunderstandings and misrepresentations only serve to heighten the critique of the ECHR and the way it is being applied. For example, when Lord Chancellor David Lammy suggested in an address to the Council of Europe on 10 December 2025 (Human Rights Day) that ‘the definition of “family life” can’t be stretched to prevent the removal of people with no right to remain in the country’, in my view, he was reacting to such misrepresentations.

The UK and the ECHR

The second Bonavero Institute report, Examining 10 reasons to stay in the European Convention on Human Rights: Informing public debate in the UK (December 2025), identifies and evaluates 10 reasons why the UK should remain within the ECHR, such as protecting free speech, democracy and privacy against intrusions. It explains how ECHR standards help to hold those in power accountable and require the state to actively protect people when they are at their most vulnerable. It considers how human rights keep up with new threats and changing social attitudes, and also how the UK’s membership of, and involvement with, the Council of Europe increases its influence and credibility on the international stage.

Many illustrative cases are cited, but there is room to mention just one here, by way of example. Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement hanged herself at Bulford barracks in Wiltshire after the failure to investigate her complaint that she had been raped by two colleagues from the Royal Military Police at a base in Germany. Applying human rights standards, an inquest was able to investigate the wider circumstances of her death and revealed how she had been mistreated in the context of a highly sexualised and bullying culture. The verdict also led to the creation of the first Service Complaints Ombudsman for the Armed Forces. Corporal Ellement’s sister, Sharon Hardy, said:

‘Accountability. Justice. Reform. These things do not happen overnight. They are the product of the years of hard work by the devastated victims of state abuse – or, where the victim has not survived, their loved ones. And the HRA enabled us to do it. Without it, we would have achieved absolutely nothing’.

Correcting the record

The authors conclude that the way in which the UK incorporated Convention rights through the HRA safeguards everyone’s rights every day.

UK withdrawal from the ECHR has now become the policy of both the Conservative party and Reform UK, based, in my view, on obviously false premises. Leaving the ECHR is a step that no democracy in Europe has ever taken. These reports seek to redress the balance in the misrepresentation of human rights, by putting forward a much more evidence-based analysis. 

Negative narratives on human rights: The most notorious example of a misreported immigration tribunal decision is the ‘chicken nuggets’ case, cited by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch in a speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference on 17 February 2025 as an example of how the ECHR ‘is weaponised by those who wish to erode our national identity and border security’.