UK Conservatives' ECHR exit plan raises security and migration risks, former ministers say

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UK Conservatives ECHR exit risks

Highlights

Dominic Grieve warns that Conservative plans to leave the ECHR would complicate UK extradition deals and hinder access to EU migration databases like Eurodac and the Schengen Information System.
Unresolved asylum appeals surged from 7,000 in 2023 to 51,000 in March 2025, as 3.5% of deported foreign offenders appealed successfully on human rights grounds between 2016–2021.
Grieve's report argues ECHR withdrawal risks undermining the Good Friday Agreement and reigniting political discord, despite party divisions over the legal implications for Northern Irish law.

Warnings over extradition and border data access

As reported by the Financial Times, a forthcoming report for the Conservative European Forum argues that leaving the ECHR is a false solution to irregular migration and could complicate cooperation with European partners on security matters.

Dominic Grieve says withdrawal would likely make it harder for the UK to agree extradition arrangements with other European countries and could also undermine efforts to secure post-Brexit access to EU migration databases. Britain has been attempting to rejoin Eurodac, the biometric database of undocumented migrants, and the Schengen Information System, which supports police border information sharing.

Grieve also says many protections associated with the ECHR are embedded in other international treaties, including safeguards against returning someone to a country where they may face persecution. In his view, leaving the convention alone would not remove those legal constraints, and he calls instead for the UK to use ongoing reform efforts around the treaty.

Political divide widens over legal and regional impact

Last week, the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, including the UK, restated each country's right to control its borders and said the Strasbourg court should operate only as a safeguard. Grieve argues that further changes are still needed, including narrowing the convention's reach in areas such as health, prison conditions and family life, and creating a single appeal route.

Pressure on the asylum system remains part of the political backdrop. Unresolved appeals for asylum seekers rose from 7,000 in 2023 to 51,000 in March 2025, while research from the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford shows that between 2016 and 2021, 3.5% of foreign national offenders being deported from the UK, or 922 cases, successfully appealed on human rights grounds.

Grieve's report also says the ECHR underpins the Good Friday Agreement because the UK government committed to incorporating convention rights into Northern Irish law. He argues that withdrawal could open a new period of political discord, while Badenoch's shadow attorney-general, Lord David Wolfson, has said treaty membership is not required for those rights to remain part of the agreement. Badenoch has adopted Wolfson's view as part of a migration policy that aligns more closely with Reform UK, even as critics inside her party warn that exit would bring legal and operational costs.

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