Are the majority of British people ‘settled’ on leaving the ECHR?

“She’s [Priti Patel MP] proud of her record of emboldening mass immigration between 2021 until now, and she won’t even leave the ECHR. These are things about which actually the majority of the British people, I think, are settled”.

During an interview on GB News on 18 August Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP suggested he thought “the majority of the British people” were “settled” on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The ECHR is an international agreement that has been in force since 1953 and is overseen by the European Court of Human Rights. All European countries, with the exception of Belarus and Russia, are members of the Convention.

We’ve asked Mr Tice what his comments were based on. 

Last year it was reported that a poll found that a majority of people were in favour of leaving the ECHR.

However, it’s worth noting that the poll, which was conducted by Whitestone Insights on behalf of the New Conservatives (a parliamentary group of Conservative MPs), did not explicitly reference the ECHR.

Instead, respondents were asked to what extent they’d support a policy to “replace the current European system of human rights laws applied in Britain with new British laws that protect rights like free speech but enable the Government to promptly deport illegal migrants”.

30% of respondents answered “support strongly”, with a further 24% answering “tend to support”, for a combined 54% of respondents who expressed support for this policy.

But a number of polls conducted by YouGov which did directly ask about the ECHR found that a majority of respondents were not in favour of leaving the Convention.

In June this year, a poll found that 54% of respondents said the UK “should remain a member” of the ECHR, while a poll in November 2023 found 51% of respondents said the UK should remain a member.

We’ve written in the past about why the way survey questions are phrased can impact poll results.