Tories threaten to pull out of human rights agreement like Russia and Belarus
A Tory immigration minister has threatened that the UK could ditch a major international human rights agreement to help tackle the small boat crisis. Robert Jenrick warned the Government will do "whatever is required" as he suggested this could mean pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Leaving the ECHR would mean the UK sits alongside countries such as Russia and Belarus who are already out of it. It would fuel accusations that Rishi Sunak is weak and unable to stand up to hardliners in the Tory Party.
The Government has previously insisted it can deliver on the pledge to "stop the boats" within the convention. But with the plan to send migrants to Rwanda still facing a Supreme Court battle, there is pressure within the Conservative Party to pull out of the ECHR. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has previously expressed her personal view that the UK should leave the convention, which is ruled on by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Mr Jenrick told Times Radio today: "You can see from the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and myself, our total commitment to this challenge. That's why we're working on every possible front. That's why we have produced the most comprehensive plan, I believe, of any European country to tackle this issue.
"And we'll do whatever is necessary ultimately to defend our borders and to bring order to our asylum system." Pressed on whether that could include leaving the ECHR, he said: "We will do whatever is required, take whatever necessary action is needed."
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Law Society of England and Wales president Lubna Shuja said: "Leaving the ECHR would mean the UK would sit as an outlier in Europe, alongside only Russia and Belarus who are already outside of the Convention. This would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, when the Government already has a perfectly good nutcracker it can use."
She said if the Government wants to address problems in the asylum system it could work to bring down the case backlog and address issues with the Illegal Migration Act rather than "leaving an extremely successful international agreement designed to protect individual rights and support political stability".
The ECHR is a Council of Europe convention, rather than a European Union one, so the UK's adherence to it was not affected by Brexit. But pulling out of the convention would put the UK at odds with the majority of European nations and could also cause complications over the operation of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and post-Brexit deals with the EU.
The first migrants were moved onto the Home Office’s barge, the Bibby Stockholm, in Portland, Dorset, on Monday. Meanwhile the Government has announced a deal with Turkey to crack down on irregular migration and dismantling people-smuggling gangs.
Mr Jenrick refused to say how much taxpayers' money is being handed to the country. He said: "We are giving some funding to Turkey. You would expect that because we are going to be working closely with them. But it is not primarily about money. This is mainly about the share of intelligence and information between our world-leading police and security services and their law enforcement authorities, so that, if we find out something important, that can be acted upon quickly, and vice versa."
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