Recent polling conducted by Savanta for Amnesty International UK found:

• More than eight in 10 people say human rights protections are as important or more important today than when they were created after the Second World War;
• 87 per cent believe rights and laws must apply equally to everyone;
• 78 per cent say rights should be permanent and protected from government interference; and
• support for the UK remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights is almost twice as high as support for leaving (48 per cent vs 26 per cent).

National tragedies such as Grenfell, the Hillsborough disaster, the infected blood scandal and the Windrush scandal were each identified by the public as key moments that show why Britain needs strong legal protections that can secure truth, justice and accountability.

Tom Morrison, Amnesty International UK’s human rights legal frameworks campaign manager, said: “There is a growing global trend where some attempt to whip up anti-rights sentiment and sow division between people. Human rights exist precisely to stop the powerful from dividing us, and harming the vulnerable.

“Human rights protections were not designed only for fair weather. They were built for the storms, the moments when authoritarianism, institutional failure or abuses of power put people at risk.

“Thankfully, the UK public instinctively understands this. Seventy-five years on from the creation of the European Convention on Human Rights, people are telling us they want their rights protected permanently. They do not trust politicians to mark their own homework or decide which rights people should or should not have.

“This is a day to celebrate our national pride in human rights and the equality they guarantee. These protections are a hard-won legacy of our grandparents’ generation. We must be responsible custodians, so that future generations inherit them too.”