Is human rights law making it too hard to deport foreign nationals who have committed serious crimes? 

What's the problem?
There has been a slew of headlines in recent months stating that foreign criminals have been allowed to stay in the UK following successful human rights challenges to deportations in court, on apparently spurious grounds. The Telegraph, which is campaigning on the issue, has reported many such cases: "Albanian criminal's deportation halted over son's distaste for chicken nuggets"; "Iranian criminal spared deportation so he can cut his son's hair"; "Psychotic Nigerian robber can stay in UK because he believes he is 'possessed'". These cases have sparked widespread criticism, particularly from the right, and fresh discussions about the role played by human rights law and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

What do the critics say about this?
The most forceful would argue that such cases show that the ECHR, and the Strasbourg Court that interprets it, are not fit for purpose: that they were not designed to cope with mass migration, that they are exploited by criminals and naive human rights lawyers, and that they simply make it too hard and costly to control illegal migration. Reform UK's Nigel Farage says his first act as prime minister would be to leave the ECHR. The Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says that if the Convention continues to stop UK governments acting in the country's national interest, the UK would "probably have to leave". Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has called the ECHR a "criminals' charter".

What does the law actually say?
The Home Office is required to deport any foreign national sentenced to 12 months or more. However, the criminal can resist deportation under the ECHR, most commonly on two grounds under Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life. (These are now written into British immigration law.) The first is that there would be "very significant obstacles to integration" if they were sent to the country in question. The obstacles must be more than the usual challenges of moving to a new country. The second ground is that the effect of deportation on a criminal's child or partner would be "unduly harsh", meaning "a degree of harshness going beyond what would necessarily be involved for any child faced with the deportation of a parent". If the person has been sentenced to four or more years, the bar is raised higher, and there must be "very compelling circumstances" to prevent them being deported. The tests are fairly stringent. Anyone making a claim on the first ground must have been lawfully resident in the UK for most of their life, and be "socially and culturally integrated" (so these are not, for instance, recent boat migrants).

What's going wrong?
Some argue that the issue is less to do with human rights law and more a "politicised judiciary" failing to interpret those laws correctly, particularly in the lower of the two "tiers" of British immigration tribunals. Judges are required to balance the criminals' rights against the public interest, in controlling migration and removing dangerous criminals. One barrister told The Times that judges were "overly sympathetic to the individual in front of them, and not enough to the public". Some cases would certainly support this theory. In February, a Pakistani man convicted of child sex offences was allowed to stay in the UK, on the grounds that his deportation would be "unduly harsh" on his daughters – though his access to them was restricted by law. On appeal, a tribunal judge set aside the ruling, calling it "contrary to the evidence, plainly wrong and rationally insupportable"; the case was sent back and is ongoing. In the "chicken nugget" case, an upper tribunal judge also set the judgment aside and sent it back, saying that the nugget argument did not "anywhere near" meet the legal test.

So does the system correct itself?
Its defenders say that, by and large, it does; a few anecdotes about chicken nuggets are being blown up out of proportion. The number of people making human rights-based appeals is actually relatively small, and most appeals fail. From 2008 to 2021, 21,521 appeals were made; and only 2,392 succeeded. (However, the government reports that the number of Article 8 cases has "substantially increased" recently, and there is a big backlog in immigration appeals, standing at 41,987 in December.) Human rights lawyers argue that the ECHR is being unfairly blamed for wider immigration issues: the very high rate of legal net migration; the arrival of larger numbers of asylum seekers on small boats; the many difficulties involved in deporting illegal migrants.

Do other nations complain about the ECHR?
Yes. Nine signatories of the Convention have written a letter accusing the Strasbourg Court of tying national lawmakers' hands, with regard to migration issues in particular. The letter said that the court was making it difficult to "make political decisions in our own democracies", and that the ECHR ought to be interpreted in ways that better reflect the "challenges" of modern irregular migration.

What is the government doing?
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a review into Article 8 immigration cases. The recent white paper on migration stated that "an overly high proportion" of such cases are now decided on the basis that they are "exceptional" to the rules, rather than in accordance with them; the government will clarify the law and make it easier to deport foreign criminals. Some £5 million will be spent on specialist prison staff in England and Wales to speed up such deportations. In April, the government also stated that anyone placed on the sex offenders register would be unable to claim asylum. However, the PM's spokesperson stated that "Britain will unequivocally remain a member of the ECHR".

The ECHR and the Strasbourg Court
The European Convention on Human Rights came into force in 1953, designed to safeguard basic freedoms and rights, in response to wartime atrocities (it is unconnected to the EU). British lawyers and officials played a significant role in drafting it. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was founded in 1959, so that individuals and groups could petition it if rights were being violated, though the UK only allowed such petitions in 1966. From 1978, the court interpreted the Convention as a "living instrument", allowing it to create new rights in accordance with what it sees as the spirit of the Convention. Thus, Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life, was originally designed to protect people from oppressive states. The court has since reinterpreted it to mean any measures that intrude upon personal autonomy – giving it the power to review much domestic law. Most Convention rights are qualified: they have to be balanced against competing interests. Critics of the court say that it has thus taken powers that are essentially political and that should be decided democratically. The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the Convention into UK law, so that human rights cases can be pursued in British courts.

"Keir Starmer has secured his legacy," said The Telegraph: his "shameful surrender of the Chagos Islands will go down as this nation's foreign policy nadir". Last week, the PM signed a long-dreaded treaty that officially hands control of the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius – effectively ceding a strategically vital territory that sits in an area of interest for China. To add insult to injury, once the treaty is ratified by MPs, we will pay Mauritius £101 million a year for the next 99 years to rent back a key UK-US military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia.

"This lousy deal amounts to a massive gift from British taxpayers to the Mauritian government," said Andrew Tettenborn in The Spectator. So why sign it? The answer, I'm afraid, "is legalism": the UN's top court had issued a non-binding ruling calling on the UK to give up control of Chagos – and the PM, ever the lawyer, eagerly bowed to international law. Perhaps he was hoping to set a "shining example" to other countries; instead, they will "regard us with contempt for being a pushover".

The deal looks "odd" on the face of it, said James Landale on BBC News. But there were plenty of "practical" reasons to sign the treaty. Multiple UN bodies have ruled that the islands belong to Mauritius; had the UK continued to ignore those rulings, the operation of the base could have become "unworkable". Diego Garcia's satellite communications would have been threatened because the UK relies on a UN agency in Geneva to maintain access to a particular electromagnetic spectrum; aircraft might not be able to fly in or out, for fear of breaching international law.

As for national security, said Sean O'Grady in The Independent, without this deal, Mauritius could have lawfully granted China permission to establish a military base on another of the islands, sparking a serious crisis. The deal specifically forbids it.

This is all true in theory, said John Rentoul in the same paper. But in reality, Mauritius' claim to the islands was "weak" – Chagos has never been part of its territory – and UN courts have "no powers of enforcement". The base wasn't threatened in any meaningful way. And yet Starmer's government doubled down on a deal that will outrage the British public, given the nation's dire finances.

I suspect the biggest driver of this decision was "postcolonial guilt", said Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times – that sense that, as a nation, we must self-flagellate to atone for the sins of the empire. But Starmer's conscience-cleansing comes at "extravagant expense" – and will help "no one but our rivals".

Thanks to his role in the hit Netflix drama "Adolescence", Ashley Walters' career is entering a new league: he is now fielding offers from Hollywood. But in another world, this kind of success might have come sooner. Having enrolled in the Sylvia Young Theatre School at seven, he started getting roles in the West End, on TV and at the National when he was in his teens.

But by then, he had begun hanging out with some tougher boys on the south London council estate where he lived, says Sophie Heawood in The Observer. So he kept all this, and his tap lessons, under wraps and was mortified when someone from Peckham recognised him on a poster for "Oliver!" at the Palladium. Soon, he had become fixated on joining the local rap group So Solid Crew.

The truth, he says, is that he was no longer proud of his acting – "because I was playing at being a gangsta rapper". It led him into dark times: he got caught up in his fellow rappers' run-ins with rival gangs, spent time in jail for firearms possession, became addicted to drink and drugs, and by 19, had had two of his eight children.

Now, though, that life is behind him. Today, he lives quietly on the Kent coast, in a glammed-up bungalow that he shares with his wife Danielle and their three children. It is not the house he'd have chosen, but Danielle is "the love of my life", he says, and there had to be compromises. Does he ever miss the drama of London? He smiles. "That would be a no."