Overview

• Kemi Badenoch confirmed it is now Conservative Party policy to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights if the party wins the next election, with details to be set out at the Manchester conference.
• The plan includes scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing ECHR-backed protections with domestic law to reassert parliamentary sovereignty.
• A nearly 200-page review by Lord Wolfson concluded withdrawal is legally and practically possible, though he cautioned it would not be a panacea and entails technical and political challenges.
• Conservative figures argue leaving would ease deportations and curb so-called lawfare, and they plan to publish further border-security proposals at the conference while insisting their approach is more detailed than Reform UK’s.
• Rights groups, legal bodies and opposition parties condemned the move as a threat to protections and potentially to the Good Friday Agreement, while Wolfson’s advice said the GFA, the UK‑EU trade deal and the Windsor Framework are not legal barriers to exit.