The ECHR is an "essential safeguard" to the Good Friday Agreement, campaigners have stressed, amid urgent warnings the "radical right is playing on fears around immigration to remove protections from all UK citizens".
A report published by the Policy Exchange think tank today claims the Good Friday Agreement does not rely on the UK remaining a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which Reform UK have said they would withdraw the UK from.
If the UK were to exit the treaty, it would make us the only European nation besides Russia and Belarus to not be signatories to it, and mean safeguards and human rights protections were removed for all UK citizens.
Naomi Smith, Chief Executive of Best for Britain, said:
“In 30 pages, the Good Friday Agreement cites the ECHR seven times as an essential safeguard and so these claims look like a wilful misinterpretation of a treaty that ended decades of bloodshed in the UK and Ireland.
“Just as they have in the US where people are now being abducted in the street by masked thugs, the radical right is playing on fears around immigration to remove protections from all UK citizens and Northern Ireland’s historic agreement may only be the first casualty if the UK Government doesn’t hold firm.”