Introduction

The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (which is commonly referred to simply as the European Convention on Human Rights, which in turn is commonly abbreviated to ECHR) was agreed in 1950 by the states of Western Europe.

The ECHR is a product of the Council of Europe (rather than the European Union) and is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights, which sits at Strasbourg (rather than the European Court of Justice, which sits at Luxembourg). Despite the obvious importance of the provisions of the ECHR, successive British governments, of both major political persuasions, consistently refused to introduce legislation giving its provisions any status in English law, on the basis that English law was perfectly capable of protecting human rights anyway. However, in 1997 the newly elected Labour government put an end to this consensus by introducing the Bill that became the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA).