How often do migrants successfully fight their removal from Britain on the basis of their human rights?

The clamour from the right for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights has been growing – even some high-profile Labour figures say it needs reform.

So, I’ve come to an immigration appeal court – unannounced – to find out how it is used by migrants and their lawyers here.

Decisions delayed, outcomes unpublished

I get to the fourth floor of a large court building in Birmingham.

The first case I’m ushered into to see is a 38-year-old Nigerian man. He came on a student visa – but that ran out.

Just before he did, he put in a claim to stay on the basis of his relationship with a woman, who is originally from Barbados but has lived and worked in Britain since 2015.

The judge, who will decide their fate, dials in via video link. He hears the man’s partner has a 17-year-old daughter.

She lives with her biological father, but the couple insist she is so close to the Nigerian man she calls him “Dad”. This is an appeal being made under Article 8 of the ECHR – the right to a family life.

The following day, it’s a different judge – this time he’s here in person.

The man in front of him is appealing against deportation to Kenya. He came to the UK as a baby with his mother and siblings.

As a teenager, he was jailed for almost 10 years for stabbing a man, causing serious injuries.

It emerges that his case is also based on Article 8 of the ECHR. Since leaving prison, he’s fathered a child who has just turned two.

There are arguments made too under Article 3 of the ECHR – which protects against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment – due to the man being diagnosed with “generalised anxiety” and depression.

It will be a few weeks before decisions are made on these cases – and the results won’t be published by the court.

I leave, thinking how opaque the process feels.

It’s also easy to see why some politicians are pointing to the ECHR – a treaty signed after the Second World War to protect the rights of everyone in the Council of Europe – as a barrier to removing more migrants.

Is the ECHR really a barrier to deportation?

“I think there’s a strong kind of political dynamic there which has led to, in some ways, you might say, a kind of scapegoating of the European Convention,” says Alice Donald, Professor of Human Rights law at Middlesex University, London.

She’s not convinced that withdrawal from ECHR would make a big difference to the number of people the UK is able to remove or deport.

“The honest answer is we don’t know, we don’t have enough data to say that,” she says.

“The data that we do have, for example, in relation to the number of human rights appeals against deportation by foreign national offenders, which has been very much in the news this year, suggests that it would really make only a marginal difference.”

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Those figures, published by the Home Office, reveal that between April 2008 and June 2021, 21,521 foreign nationals due to be deported because of crimes they’d committed appealed, and 2,392 were successful on human rights grounds only. That’s around 181 on average per year.

We don’t have figures for how many other types of immigrants are allowed to stay on the basis of human rights. Small boat migrants who claim asylum would usually rely on another convention.

“In terms of asylum claims, it is governed by the 1951 Refugee Convention as a different treaty,” Prof Donald explains.

“There is, of course, overlapping protection with the prohibition of torture in the European Convention… so if the Refugee Convention were still in place, then of course people seeking asylum would rely on that.”

She also believes there have been “a number of erroneous stories or exaggerated stories”.

Debunking the chicken nugget myth

In February 2025, it was widely reported that an Albanian criminal’s deportation was halted over his son’s dislike of foreign chicken nuggets.

“What actually happened in that case is that it went to the upper tribunal (second-tier immigration appeal court) which ordered that he could be deported. And also specifically said that the evidence to do with chicken nuggets was nowhere near the level required,” Prof Donald says.

What leaving the ECHR would mean

Withdrawal from the ECHR would mean the guarantees it provides would be removed for everyone in the UK, not just migrants.

It not only protects the rights to life, liberty, fair trial and freedom of expression among others, but also prohibits torture, slavery and discrimination.

Pulling out of the treaty could also breach the Belfast Good Friday Agreement – though some say such an outcome is avoidable.

However, in a country where immigration is the top issue of concern for voters, there are some who now think that is a price worth paying.

The King and Queen will meet the new Pope during a state visit to Vatican City next month.

The couple will join Leo XIV, who was elected pope earlier this year after the death of Pope Francis, in late October to celebrate the 2025 jubilee year, Buckingham Palace said.

The Catholic Church typically marks a papal jubilee every 25 years.

Charles and Camilla‘s visit is expected to celebrate the ecumenical work by the Church of England and the Catholic Church, reflecting the Jubilee year’s theme of walking together as “Pilgrims of Hope”.

The King is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a role which dates back to Henry VIII, who named himself Supreme Head of the Church of England after he was excommunicated by Pope Paul III and broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th century to marry Anne Boleyn.

The King and Queen had a meeting with Pope Francis just 12 days before he died.

Their historic state visit to the Vatican in early April was cancelled due to the then-pontiff’s poor health, but they managed to visit him privately during their trip to Italy.

The meeting with Francis, in what would be the final weeks of his life, was arranged at the last minute and took place on their 20th wedding anniversary on 9 April, with the pontiff wanting to personally wish them a happy anniversary.

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In an official message released following the news of Francis’s death on 21 April, the King said he and the Queen were “most deeply saddened”.

In May, Charles sent a private message to Pope Leo XIV congratulating him on his election, Buckingham Palace said.

Hackers who claimed to have stolen pictures, names and addresses of over 8,000 children in a cyber attack on a nursery chain have told Sky News they will release the profiles of more children and employees.

The group, calling itself Radiant, had posted images of children attending the Kido nursery chain in London on the dark web and demanded a ransom from the company.

So far, the information released has been restricted to the personal contact details of children who attend the nurseries, as well as their parents and carers.

Radiant has told Sky News they intend to imminently release a new set of data, including the profiles of 30 more children and 100 employees.

It said the release would include the personal information of the employees including “full names, national insurance numbers, DOBs [date of births], full addresses, employment start date, email addresses and more”.

The stolen information on the children includes medical records, incident reports and the allocation of drugs and medicine given to the children.

The group claimed it typically demands around 1.5% of a company’s yearly revenue in ransom.

Sky News understands the group has not received any money from the Kido nursery group.

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On Thursday, parents whose children attend a Kido nursery branch told Sky News they had received an email confirming the data incident and had been offered reassurance by the company.

An Information Commissioner’s Office spokesperson said: “Kido International has reported an incident to us and we are assessing the information provided.”

The Metropolitan Police said they “received a referral on Thursday, 25 September, following reports of a ransomware attack on a London-based organisation”.

They said enquiries are at the early stages and no arrests have been made.

Ciaran Martin, former chief of the National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of the GCHQ spy agency, told Sky News presenter Samantha Washington he believes the nursery chain should not pay the ransom.

“This data is not coming back. That’s the bit that isn’t reassuring. There is no way of guaranteeing the suppression of this data,” he said, adding hacking groups often sell the data on to other criminals or use it for scams or fraud.

“And when law enforcement get to this group, even if the nursery pays the ransom, they’ll find the data – they won’t delete it. They never do. So it won’t achieve anything.”

Recent high-profile victims of cyber criminals in the UK include retail giant Marks and Spencer, which lost an estimated £300m in a ransomware attack earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the government has been urged to step in this week to support suppliers affected by a cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover, after the car-making firm was forced to halt production at the end of August.

A Kido spokesperson said: “We recently identified and responded to a cyber incident. We are working with external specialists to investigate and determine what happened in more detail.

“We swiftly informed both our families and the relevant authorities and continue to liaise closely with them.”