SHOULD WE LEAVE THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS?

Filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023, this fascinating panel do battle over the ECHR and reveal much along the way.
For many, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and its courts in Strasbourg, has become the focus - either as the bulwark against anti-refugee sentiment, or the block on democratic process.
In the aftermath of the Second World War the European Convention on Human Rights was seen as a protection against the tyranny and oppression that some European nations had recently endured. Nowadays, those who support it stress the importance of human rights as setting a minimum standard which democracies should guarantee. Is the problem therefore simply one of European judicial overreach, or is it essentially about the very notion of ‘human rights’ themselves? Are human rights and democratic, collective action doomed to forever be at loggerheads? With courts in Strasbourg and London ruling to impede government plans to stop small boats crossing the Channel, are human rights making popular government impossible? Or is the ECHR being scapegoated for inadequacies in our own backyard?
The speakers are:
Steven Barrett - barrister, Radcliffe Chambers; writer on law, Spectator
Jamie Burton - founder and chair, Just Fair; barrister (KC), Doughty Street Chambers; author Three Times Failed: why we need enforceable socio-economic rights
Luke Gittos - criminal lawyer; author, Human Rights - Illusory Freedom; director, Freedom Law Clinic
John Oxley - writer, New Statesman, Spectator,and UnHerd; consultant; barrister
Angelica Walker-Werth - writer, editor and programmes manager, Objective Standard Institute
The chair is: Jon Holbrook - barrister; writer, spiked, Critic, Conservative Woman
This debate was filmed by volunteers working with Worldwrite. Please help ensure the charity is able to edit a further 30 debates by hitting the THANKS button above and donating whatever you can afford.

[@Sarahk150]

This is very interesting and informative I do find the disdain for democracy and distrust of the public which underlies it quite shocking.

[@gravitaslost]

Yes.

[@paulilott2478]

Great polarised open debate. One of your best. Human rights use to be negative, where freedoms were based on freedom from excessive state interference, but now under the guise of the ECHR, human rights are granted positively by the state. This has lead to the a plethora of rights and identified minorities with protected characteristics, which is a distinct move away from universal rights applied equally to all citizens.

[@peterson17able]

Luke Gittos steals it (without breaking the law). Democracy! Other panellists do well too on this very important subject.

[@TheJack246]

Do we have a bill of rights in England already?

[@marl6908]

I wonder if this has anything to do with Britain being Israel's butt-boy xD Timing would suggest so.

[@davidbyrne9811]

ifthere is a right to property then what is compulsery orders all about,,, Failed,