75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights

Approximate read time: 15 minutes

On 20 March 2025, the House of Lords is scheduled to debate the following motion:

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench) to move that this House takes note of the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights.

1. The European Convention on Human Rights

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was signed by members of the Council of Europe in Rome in 1950, two years after the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.^[1] The ECHR came into force on 3 September 1953, marking the first instrument to give effect to certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration and make them binding.^[2]

Originally signed by 12 member states of the Council of Europe, the ECHR now has 46 signatories.^[3] The UK was one of the states that drafted the ECHR and was one of the first states to ratify it, in 1951.^[4]

By ratifying the ECHR, member states accept international legal obligations to guarantee certain civil and political rights to people within their jurisdictions. These rights are set out in a series of articles of (and protocols to) the convention, and include:

• article 2: right to life
• article 3: prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment
• article 4: prohibition of slavery and forced labour
• article 5: right to liberty and security
• article 6: right to a fair trial
• article 7: prohibition of retrospective criminal penalties
• article 8: right to private and family life
• article 9: freedom of thought, conscience and religion
• article 10: freedom of expression
• article 11: freedom of assembly and association
• article 12: right to marry
• article 13: right to an effective national remedy for breach of these rights
• article 14: prohibition of discrimination in the protection of these rights^[5]

The UK has also ratified Protocol No. 13 to the convention on the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, as well as Protocol No. 1, which contains three additional rights:

• right to free enjoyment of property
• right to education
• right to free and fair elections

2. The European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is an international court which rules on individual or state applications regarding possible violations of the rights set out in the ECHR.^[6] It was established in 1959 by the then members of the Council of Europe to ensure they were observing the obligations they had committed themselves to.

The UK declared that it would accept the jurisdiction of the ECtHR in relation to individual complaints in 1965.^[7] The court’s judgments and other information relevant to the UK are publicly available.^[8] Statistics on the work of the court with reference to the UK are provided in section 4 of this briefing.

The ECtHR also publishes its rules of court and practice directions.^[9] It is assisted in its work by a registry, which provides legal and administrative support, particularly in the processing and triaging of applications made to the court.^[10]

3. Human Rights Act 1998

The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the ECHR into UK law. The aim was to “bring rights home”, enabling people to enforce their rights in the domestic courts.^[11] The act, in the words of Lord Irvine, the then lord chancellor, at second reading of the Human Rights Bill in the House of Lords in 1998, “does not create new human rights or take any existing human rights away. It provides better and easier access to rights which already exist”.^[12]

The central provisions of the act, which came fully into force on 1 October 2000, are as follows:^[13]

• Section 2 ensures that the courts “must take into account” the judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights that are relevant to the proceedings before the court in question.
• Sections 3 and 4 require legislation to be interpreted compatibly with convention rights “so far as it is possible to do so” and provides for the courts to make declarations of incompatibility when such an interpretation is impossible in relation to primary legislation.
• Section 6 requires public authorities to act compatibly with convention rights. This obligation applies to all bodies carrying out “functions of a public nature”, including central government and the courts. However, in recognition of the constitutional primacy of Parliament, section 6 expressly does not apply to “either House of Parliament or a person exercising functions in connection with proceedings in Parliament”.
• Sections 7 and 8 give individuals whose rights have been violated the right to bring proceedings and obtain remedies in domestic courts rather than having to go to the ECtHR in Strasbourg to have their rights enforced.

4. European Court of Human Rights judgments

Under Article 46(1) of the ECHR, the UK is obliged to implement judgments of the ECtHR in any case to which it is a party.^[14] The implementation (or ‘execution’) of judgments of the ECtHR is overseen by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe under Article 46(2).

The Committee of Ministers is the Council of Europe’s statutory decision-making body, in which every member state is represented. It is advised by a specialist secretariat (the Department for the Execution of Judgments) in its work overseeing the implementation of judgments.

There are three parts to the implementation of an ECtHR judgment in cases where the court has found there to have been a violation:

• the payment of just satisfaction, a sum of money which the court may award to the applicant
• other individual measures, required to put the applicant, so far as possible, in the position they would have been in had the violation not occurred
• general measures, required to prevent the violation happening again or to put an end to an ongoing violation

Every year, the UK government provides a report which sets out the government’s record on the implementation of human rights judgments to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR).

In the most recent report, from November 2024, the Ministry of Justice supplied various statistics on UK cases at the ECtHR, as below.^[15]

4.1 New applications

The UK government noted that applications have been on a general downward trend over the last 10 years. By population, the UK has the lowest rate of applications of all member states: in 2023 it was 3.0 per million, while for all states combined it was 47.4 per million.^[16]

Table 1. ECtHR: Applications against the UK allocated to a judicial formation^[17]

Figure 1. ECtHR: Applications against the UK allocated to a judicial formation (2014–2023)

4.2 Inadmissible applications

The Ministry of Justice noted that, due to the time lag between an application being allocated for initial consideration and a decision being made on its admissibility, the number of applications declared inadmissible cannot be directly compared to newly allocated applications on a year-by-year basis.^[18] However, the report contended that it was “noteworthy” that the number declared inadmissible in the last nine years is close to the number allocated, indicating that “only a small minority of allocated applications are found admissible and proceed to a judgment”.

Table 2. ECtHR: Applications against the UK declared inadmissible or struck out^[19]

Figure 2. ECtHR: Applications against the UK declared inadmissible or struck out

4.3 Judgments

The Ministry of Justice noted the numbers of judgments and adverse judgments involving the UK “remain[ed] low”. In the table below the top row illustrates the number of judgments and the next row in brackets is the number of those judgments that found violations.

Table 3. ECtHR: Judgments in UK cases (judgments with violations)^[20]

Figure 3. ECtHR: Judgments in UK cases and judgments with violations

4.4 Caseload

The Ministry of Justice notes that the caseload of ongoing applications against the UK under consideration by the ECtHR has followed a downward trend over the last 10 years. It remains low both in absolute terms and as a proportion of all states’ applications. For comparison, the UK population comprises 8.1% of the population of all states (including Russia).

Table 4. Ongoing caseload of the ECtHR at year end

 Figure 4. Ongoing caseload of the ECtHR at year end

4.5 Implementation

The report notes that, at the end of 2023, the UK was responsible for 12 (0.31%) of a total 3,819 pending cases before the Committee of Ministers (this includes both adverse judgments where the implementation is still being supervised and friendly settlements). The Ministry of Justice maintained this is lower than for other states with a similar population size.^[21]

5. UK government position on the ECHR

In the same November 2024 report cited above, the Labour government also set out its position on human rights and the ECHR:

This government is fully committed to the protection of human rights both at home and abroad. We are committed to the international human rights framework and the important role that multilateral organisations like the Council of Europe play in upholding it.

The Council of Europe and the ECHR have a leading role in the promotion and protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. The government is unequivocally committed to the ECHR. The government likewise considers the HRA an important part of our constitution and fundamental to human rights protections in the UK.^[22]

The report further noted the UK’s recent participation in the Execution Coordinators Network, which brings together all the national coordinators of Council of Europe member states with reference to the ECtHR judgments, and the UK’s signing of the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law.^[23]

On the AI declaration, the report noted that on 5 September 2024 the UK was amongst the first signatories—alongside the EU and eight non-EU states, including the US—to sign the framework convention, which aims to govern the “safe use of artificial intelligence (AI)”,^[24] and aims “to ensure that activities within the lifecycle of AI systems are fully consistent with human rights, democracy, and the rule of law”.^[25]

The new framework has three over-arching safeguards:

• protecting human rights, including ensuring people’s data is used appropriately, their privacy is respected and AI does not discriminate against them
• protecting democracy, by ensuring countries take steps to prevent public institutions and processes being undermined
• protecting the rule of law, by putting the onus on signatory countries to regulate AI-specific risk, protect their citizens from potential harms and ensure its safe use

The government contends that “once the treaty is ratified and brought into effect in the UK, existing laws and measures to safeguard human rights from the risks of AI will be enhanced”.^[26]

6. Recent comments from the Conservative Party on the ECHR

At various points when in government, Conservative Party ministers and officials were critical of the operation and interpretation of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998, particularly with regard to immigration and asylum cases.^[27]

The party took several steps when in government aimed at “updating” and “rebalancing” the operation of human rights law in the UK. This included the independent Human Rights Act review launched in 2020,^[28] and consulting on a draft ‘bill of rights’ designed to “take the next step in the development of the UK’s tradition of upholding human rights”.^[29]

The resulting Bill of Rights Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 22 June 2022.^[30] Second reading was provisionally scheduled for September 2022 but did not take place. Then justice secretary Alex Chalk announced in June 2023 that it would be withdrawn. For further detail on the independent Human Rights Act review and the Bill of Rights Bill, see:

• House of Commons Library, ‘The European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998’, 6 February 2024
• House of Lords Library, ‘Human Rights Act 1998: Does it need replacing?’, 7 July 2022

The current leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, and other current shadow ministers have made several interventions on the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. At an event hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank in February 2025, in her first set piece on foreign policy since becoming leader of the party, Ms Badenoch said that the UK should “look again” at some international agreements such as the ECHR to see if they operated in a way compatible with the national interest.^[31] In her speech, she said:

We need to take a cold, hard look at the agreements we have signed and ask ourselves whether they really serve our national interest today. Yes, some were agreed in the aftermath of the last world war. Others during the optimism at the end of the cold war. And yes, British jurists and diplomats were behind a lot of these developments. But some of these arrangements have mutated out of all recognition.

Over the last twenty years the ECHR rulings morphed so fundamentally that they now limit our ability to control our borders or even fight in war […] We cannot win a war against an opponent willing to break all the rules while we insist on playing by the most gentle of Queensbury rules.^[32]

Most recently, the Conservative Party has proposed an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill currently before Parliament that would disapply the Human Rights Act 1998 in certain immigration cases in order to prevent legal challenges to deportation decisions on human rights grounds.^[33] Speaking to the proposal in an interview on the BBC’s ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp contended that courts had interpreted the ECHR “in ways that defy common sense”. He added:

Of course we believe in rights, but where you have courts just constantly expanding the definition in a way that was never contemplated at the beginning…it gets out of hand.^[34]

Mr Philp said membership in the ECHR required “proper consideration”, which the Conservatives will be thinking about “in a very carefully considered manner in the coming months”.

Speaking on the same programme, Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden said that the proposal ”looks like an outsourcing” of immigration decisions to the EHtCR. He added:

I don’t think that really deals with the issue and I’m afraid it’s symptomatic of the kind of gimmicks without action that we saw for a long, long period of time.^[35]

The proposals were part of several measures which also attracted strong criticism from refugee groups and human rights organisations.^[36]

7. Read more

• House of Commons Library, ‘UK cases at the European Court of Human Rights since 1975’, 29 January 2025; and ‘The European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998’, 6 February 2024
• House of Lords Library, ‘Human Rights Act 1998: Does it need replacing?’, 7 July 2022
• Council of Europe, ‘European Convention on Human Rights’, accessed 27 February 2025

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Cover image by Outlandos [ym] from Flickr.