Deportation case tests Labour’s appetite for ECHR reform

Good morning. A news story that revealed fugitives — wanted for murder and child rape in Brazil — have been able to remain in the UK under human rights laws has brought an internal Labour debate into the open: about whether and how the UK should seek to reform the UK’s application of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Some thoughts on the specific case and the wider politics of it below.

The hateful eight

Something that unites the political leadership at the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney-General’s office (three parts of the government that are often at odds, under Labour and under previous governments) is a belief that if the government can’t successfully deport foreign criminals, then a) Labour’s re-election hopes are in jeopardy and so is b) the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Now two MPs, Dan Tomlinson and Jake Richards, have written in the Times calling for the government to seek to reform the application of article 8 (which includes the right to family life). There is some important intra-Labour politics here that I will explore in greater detail in a future newsletter: suffice to say for now that these are two MPs considered to be government loyalists and the article has been interpreted by other Labour MPs as licensed “thinking out loud”.

For now I want to talk about the specifics of this particular case uncovered by ITV News, in which recourse to article 3 (freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) and article 8 (respect for your private and family life) are both factored in.

The first important policy question is — do you think that the state should be constrained by rights to property, privacy, freedom of religion, and so forth at all? (I don’t think it is going to shock anyone that I think the answer to this one is “yes”.) The second is: can these rights be a useful shield if they are anything other than universal? (I think the answer is “no”: at its crudest level, how are any of us protected from inhuman treatment before the fact if the government can claim “well, we thought he or she was an immigrant at the time”? The answer is we aren’t.)

But the third is “do we think the application of this right is too broad or perverse, or being implemented in a way that erodes support for universal human rights?” A good example of a case where the answer is, in my view, a “yes” is the Bloomberg News versus ZXC case, where the UK Supreme Court concluded that ZXC’s right to privacy and a family life meant that Bloomberg couldn’t identify ZXC, a businessman, as the subject of a criminal investigation.

And another good example of that, in my view, is giving people who have committed “crimes against the person” (murder, rape, domestic violence, child blockual abuse and so forth) potential ability to resist deportation under the right to a family life. Just as I don’t think a British citizen should expect to win, say, a custody battle after committing a crime against the person, I don’t think “deportation runs against my right to a family life” should be a winning case in these hands.

The policy challenge in this case is more difficult. That’s article 3 (the right not to be subject to torture and inhuman treatment), which is why the fugitives have not been extradited, according to ITV’s investigation. Conditions in Brazilian prisons are very bad and are frequently criticised by international organisations. There’s already a policy solution of a sort here — a memorandum of understanding between the UK and potential extradition destinations about prison conditions. The Home Office has stated it is reviewing the way human rights law is applied in cases specifically relating to prison standards overseas.

But I don’t think it is politically defensible or sustainable to have a position where the British state’s argument is that anyone — whether they are a British citizen or a citizen from another country — can be accused of a crime in another democracy, that is also a crime in the UK, but that prison conditions might mean they walk free in the UK. In practice that means saying that large numbers of countries are not extradition candidates: which means that either UK courts’ interpretation of article 3 and what constitutes “inhuman treatment” will have to narrow, or the UK government will end up leaving, or the UK will restrict immigration from countries whose prison conditions are not up to scratch or all of the above.

Now try this

Delighted to see that the Manchester Museum, one of my absolute favourite museums, is the winner of the 2025 European Museum of the Year. Really do go and visit (it is also open late on Wednesday evenings, which is a very nice way to spend the time).

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