Recent changes and political proposals indicate a deliberate shift towards a more restrictive system, with potential consequences for the rights and security of individuals in the UK.
These developments are not happening in isolation. The political discourse in the UK includes concrete proposals for radical change. The right-wing Reform UK party, which has gained political ground, has officially proposed a policy of withdrawing from the ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act, and suspending the application of the UN Refugee Convention. The stated goal is to enable mass detention and deportation of asylum seekers by disapplying international human rights safeguards. While this is currently a party policy, it signals a direction of travel that more mainstream parties may feel pressured to follow.
Implications for EU Citizens and Legal Agreements
The cumulative effect of these changes and proposals has direct implications for both the rights of individuals and the UK’s international commitments.
- Erosion of Legal Stability: The frequent amendments to immigration rules create a system of perpetual uncertainty. For EU citizens who moved to the UK under one set of rules, this constant churn makes long-term planning difficult and increases the risk of inadvertently falling foul of new regulations.
- Threats to Fundamental Rights: Withdrawing from the ECHR would be a seismic event. The rights protected by the Convention and the Human Rights Act—including the right to a fair trial, privacy, freedom from torture, and non-discrimination—are not privileges but fundamental safeguards for everyone in the UK. Removing these protections would weaken the legal recourse available to all residents, including EU citizens.
- Violations of Post-Brexit Agreements: The legal action by the European Commission is a formal assertion that the UK is failing its obligations. This creates friction and erodes the trust necessary for a stable EU-UK relationship, potentially affecting cooperation beyond immigration.
Illegal Mass Scale Data Privacy Violations
Recent legislative changes have created a more permissive environment for data processing and surveillance, raising concerns about the erosion of privacy safeguards. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025: This new law amends the UK’s data protection framework. Key changes include creating a “more permissive framework” for automated decision-making (ADM), allowing decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on individuals to be made solely by algorithms in wider circumstances. It also allows the use of storage and access technologies, like cookies, without explicit consent in certain situations deemed to be low-risk. For law enforcement and intelligence services processing data, the Act provides exemptions from some safeguards for reasons such as protecting national security . The Act introduces a new test for transferring personal data out of the UK, requiring that protection in the destination country is “not materially lower” than in the UK. This is a subtle but potential weakening of the standard compared to the EU’s “essentially equivalent” requirement, which could lead to divergence from European standards and even jeopardise the UK’s data adequacy status with the EU.
The United Kingdom has established a de facto surveillance state, characterised by a legal architecture that permits mass intrusion and a practical expansion of facial recognition technology without meaningful public consent. This framework is underpinned by the Investigatory Powers Act, which legalises the bulk interception of communications—a practice condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violating the rights to privacy and freedom of expression due to a lack of “end-to-end safeguards.” This mass data harvesting, historically exposed by GCHQ’s “Tempora” program, operates in tandem with the rapidly growing use of live facial recognition by police, who scanned millions of faces in a single year. Critics describe this as a system of “self-regulation,” as the technology expands without a specific Act of Parliament to govern its use, creating a pervasive monitoring network that tracks citizens’ movements, associations, and digital lives. This trajectory towards a system where the population is routinely observed by the state and its algorithms poses a direct threat to civil liberties and democratic freedoms, creating a “chilling effect” where the mere potential of being monitored can suppress lawful dissent and public assembly.
GCHQ’s Mass Data Surveillance and Human Rights Violations
The UK’s surveillance apparatus, much of which was revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, has been formally condemned by Europe’s top human rights court for overstepping legal boundaries. The “Tempora” Programme and Bulk Interception: In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ was secretly running mass surveillance programmes, such as “Tempora,” which involved the bulk interception of internet traffic from undersea fibre-optic cables. This allowed GCHQ to collect, process, and store the private communications of millions of people on a daily basis, even when those people were not suspected of any wrongdoing.
Landmark Rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR): In a landmark judgment, the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR ruled that the UK’s bulk interception regime violated the rights to privacy and freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court found that the legal framework “did not contain sufficient ‘end-to-end’ safeguards” to protect against arbitrariness and abuse. Specifically, it condemned the lack of independent authorisation for interception warrants, flaws in the application process, and insufficient oversight of how intercepted communications were selected for examination. The court also highlighted that the acquisition of communications data (metadata revealing who you contact, when, and where you go online) is as serious a privacy risk as intercepting the content of communications, as it can “reveal a huge amount about any one of us – from our political views to our sexual orientation”.
Intelligence Sharing with Foreign Agencies: The ECHR case also revealed the extent of intelligence sharing, particularly with the US National Security Agency (NSA). The UK government had access to vast databases of information collected by the NSA, and vice versa, under secret legal frameworks that were initially found to be unlawful.
The Trajectory Towards a “Surveillance State”
The combination of permissive new laws, a history of unlawful surveillance, and the expansion of technologies like facial recognition paints a concerning picture. For citizens of other European countries in the UK, this is not an abstract issue. The mass surveillance programmes did not distinguish by nationality and involved the “unfettered harvesting of millions of people’s private communications”. The weakening of data protection standards and the potential loss of EU adequacy decisions create further legal uncertainty and risk for the data of Europeans in Britain.
The core finding of the ECHR was that the UK’s surveillance systems lacked the robust, independent oversight necessary in a democratic society. The court warned that “a system of secret surveillance set up to protect national security may undermine or even destroy democracy under the cloak of defending it” . Despite some subsequent reforms, civil liberties groups argue that newer legislation, like the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (the “Snoopers’ Charter”), retains many of the same flaws and continues to pose a threat to civil liberties.
Vigilance and Preparedness
While the term “mass evacuation” is not supported by the available information and reflects a worst-case scenario, the European Union and its member states do have established mechanisms and a responsibility to prepare for crises affecting their citizens abroad.
The EU Civil Protection Mechanism is a framework for coordinating disaster response among European states. Its guidelines emphasise the importance of: Developing plans that specifically account for the presence and potential needs of foreign nationals during a crisis—establishing systems for a rapid and effective response, including the coordination of assets and information. Involving civil society and migrant communities in preparedness efforts to build trust and understand specific vulnerabilities.
In light of the UK’s legislative trajectory, it would be a prudent and standard exercise of diplomatic duty for European governments to continuously monitor the UK’s legal and political developments, especially those concerning the ECHR. Update and strengthen their national contingency plans for assisting citizens abroad in situations of legal instability or a sharp deterioration of rights protections. Ensure their consular services in the UK have the resources and plans to support citizens who may face legal difficulties or uncertainty.