Leave the European Convention on Human Rights: Restore Parliament's Final Say

Britain should be governed by laws made in Britain.

We are calling on the Government to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Convention on Human Rights, and to protect our liberties the way this country protected them for centuries — through our own Parliament, our own courts, and our own law.

First, let us be precise about what this is. The European Convention on Human Rights is not the European Union. It belongs to the Council of Europe, and its court sits in Strasbourg. Leaving it is not a second Brexit, and nobody should pretend otherwise. Article 58 of the Convention allows any state to withdraw on six months' notice. This is a decision Britain is entitled to take, and entitled to take calmly.

The Government has already conceded that the current framework is not working.

In June 2025 the Lord Chancellor told Europe's justice ministers that "across Europe, public confidence in the rule of law is fraying", and said of the Convention: "It has endured because it has evolved. Now, it must do so again."

Since then the Government has gone further. The Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 came before the House of Commons on 30 June 2026, tightening how Article 8 — the right to private and family life — is applied in immigration cases. The Government's own impact assessment estimates that the change could result in around 11,700 more Article 8 claims being refused.

Read that figure again, because of where it comes from. It is the Government's own estimate of how many people are currently avoiding removal on grounds ministers themselves no longer consider justified. That is not our accusation about the Convention. It is their arithmetic.

But reinterpreting a treaty is not the same as being in charge of one.

Ministers say they remain "resolutely committed" to the Convention and intend to reform it from within, alongside other European governments. We understand the instinct. We do not believe it will work.

A treaty that dozens of countries are party to cannot be rewritten to Britain's requirements by Britain alone. And an interpretation agreed this year can be reinterpreted next year, by a court we do not appoint, whose judgments we cannot overturn, and whose direction no British voter can change at any election.

Sovereignty that depends on other governments agreeing to let you have it is not sovereignty. It is permission.

The scale of the problem is not in dispute.

In the year ending March 2026, 39,000 people arrived in the United Kingdom by small boat — around 90% of everyone detected entering the country without permission. Whatever view anyone takes on immigration, a country that cannot decide who enters it, and cannot remove those with no right to remain, is not fully in charge of its own affairs. The people who profit most from that failure are the criminal gangs who fill the boats.

None of this is an argument against human rights.

Britain did not learn about liberty from Strasbourg. Habeas corpus, trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, the rule against arbitrary imprisonment — these are British inheritances, older than the Convention by centuries, and they will outlast our membership of it. The question has never been whether rights should be protected. It is who protects them, and to whom those people answer.

We say: Parliament. Elected by you, and removable by you.

And we will not pretend there are no consequences.

There are serious questions to answer about the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, which provides for the Convention to be incorporated in Northern Ireland law, and about the law enforcement provisions of the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. We believe those questions have answers. We also believe that any government proposing withdrawal owes the country an honest account of them rather than a slogan — which is why we have made it one of our demands rather than quietly leaving it out.

That is the difference between a campaign and a soundbite.

It doesn't matter which party you support. A power that sits beyond the reach of your vote sits beyond the reach of your vote whoever is in office. If you would not accept a British government making these decisions unaccountably, you should not accept anybody else doing it either.

Nobody has paid for this campaign. This petition has received no funding from any party, company, lobby group or third party — not a penny. It is an entirely independent initiative of the Great British PAC.

Make your voice count. Tell the Government that Britain's laws should be made in Britain, and answerable to the British people.

Stand up and be counted for your country. Thank you.