Inexcusable for Andrea Jenkyns not to know the difference between the EU and ECHR - Yorkshire Post Letters

I was amazed to see that Morley and Outwood MP Andrea Jenkyns was proudly displaying a letter she had sent to the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on social media.

She was demanding that the UK withdraws from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). She claimed, without any justification that, “The overwhelming majority of British people…want to withdraw from the convention altogether”. She went on to claim, “My constituents, alongside many millions in our nation voted to end the jurisdiction of this foreign court”.

Now I seem to have missed “millions in our nation” voting to leave the ECHR, maybe she is referring to the 2016 EU referendum? If she is, it is amazing that a former (albeit briefly) Minister of Education does not know that the ECHR is nothing to do with the EU.

It was set up to stop governments from being free to infringe ordinary people’s human rights like the Nazis did in the 1930s/40s. To protect citizens from their own governments. If the UK left it would join the only two European countries not to be members of the convention, namely Russia and Belorussia. That should tell you all you need to know.

If Ms Jenkyns is to continue to pursue such dangerous policies, she could at least understand what it is that she is so against.

It is inexcusable that she doesn’t understand such basics as the difference between the ECHR and the EU. Frankly the people of Morley and Outwood deserve better and should take action at the ballot box.