Major warning over ‘demonisation of migrants’ together with hurt to British individuals
Mary-Ann Stephenson, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, warned the language around migration harms not only migrants but also ethnic minority British people
The new chairwoman of Britain’s equalities watchdog has warned against the “demonisation of migrants”.
Mary-Ann Stephenson, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, warned the language around migration harms not only migrants but also ethnic minority British people.
And she said it would be “a mistake” for the UK to withdraw from the longstanding European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). She described the international convention as “really important” and said leaving would weaken the rights everyone depends on.
The convention – an international treaty – has drawn criticism from some on the right of politics who argue it hampers efforts to deport illegal migrants. Both the Tories and Reform UK have said they would quit it as part of efforts to tackle immigration.
READ MORE: Keir Starmer fights back against far-right with illegal migration demand
The Labour Government has said it will not leave the European treaty but ministers are reviewing human rights law to make it easier to deport people who have no right to be in the
Changes to Article 3 – prohibition on torture or inhuman or degrading treatment – and Article 8 – the right to family life – are included in the Government’s plans to overhaul the asylum system.
Ms Stephenson, who became chair of the commission at the beginning of December, said of the convention: “It’s embedded in UK law through the Human Rights Act, and it provides rights that protect all of us.”
She gave examples such as the John Worboys black cab rapist case which saw the Supreme Court rule that police can be held liable for serious failures in their investigations, and another involving the threatened separation of an elderly couple when one needed to go into residential care.
Ms Stephenson said: “These are all sorts of cases where most people would think that’s the sort of thing we would want to see. Those are the sorts of rights we would want to have. And so I think leaving the European Convention is a mistake. It weakens the rights that all of us depend on.”
She also noted a “real risk of people using, quite often, cases where human rights arguments were made in court but were not successful”.
Ms Stephenson noted research from the University of Oxford earlier this year which highlighted “several high-profile examples of misleading coverage, including the so-called ‘chicken nuggets’ case – widely reported as the prevention of an individual’s deportation on the basis of his child’s dislike of foreign food, despite the decision not being based on this detail and having already been overturned”.
She said: “I think it’s really important that we have honesty in the way that we talk about human rights, and that we also have a recognition that the demonisation of migrants, the creating this idea that migration causes huge risks for the country can make the lives not just of migrants to the UK, but of ethnic minority UK citizens, very, very difficult.”
Last month, families affected by the Grenfell, Hillsborough, infected blood and Windrush scandals, as well as Covid bereaved campaigners, wrote a powerful letter branding the ECHR “more vital than ever”.
The groups wrote that the convention was vital in their battle to shine light on state cover-ups and failings. Their letter, which was shared exclusively with The Mirror, said: “We write as groups who know what it means when institutions fail and when truth, accountability, and justice are denied.
“Without the protections of the ECHR, many of our struggles would have been longer, lonelier, and more hopeless. The Convention gave us not a guarantee of justice, but the possibility of it: the chance to demand answers, to press for accountability, and to challenge power when it turned away. It is a safeguard against silence.”
