Robert Jenrick has demanded that prospective Conservative candidates should either promise to support leaving the European convention on human rights or stand down.

As the party continues to debate whether to pledge to withdraw from the international agreement, the shadow justice secretary said he would get candidates “to sign a contract to say they actually stand for Conservative values”.

“I would get them to say you have got to leave the European convention on human rights, and if you don’t want to do that, don’t stand as a Conservative,” he said. Leaving the convention is not currently a Tory policy.

Jenrick’s comments go further than the party leader, Kemi Badenoch, who was elected last year after telling her party leaving the treaty would not be a “silver bullet” to tackling immigration.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/25/tory-candidates-must-pledge-support-for-leaving-echr-or-stand-down-says-jenrick

In his speech to the Congress, Churchill stated:

“In the centre of our movement stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law.”

Winston Churchill, (The Hague, 7th May 1948)

It was from this gathering that the ECHR began to take shape. The assembly proposed a list of rights to be protected, and also drew a number of articles directly from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was formally drafted by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg during the summer of 1949. Over 100 members of parliament from across Europe assembled to draft the charter. The United Kingdom was the very first nation to ratify the convention in March of 1951.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/what-is-the-european-convention-on-human-rights