Rishi Sunak's rushed law won’t get Rwanda flights to take off
Rishi Sunak is facing growing calls by ministers to lead Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights and end the migrant crisis.
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick is understood to be among those saying the PM must disapply the ECHR or the first deportation flights to Rwanda – declared unlawful by the Supreme Court – will never take off.
A new treaty with Rwanda is expected in days. Emergency legislation is also expected to declare the central African nation a safe country.
However, the Centre for Brexit Policy think tank warned: “There will be challenges based on individual circumstances even if emergency legislation reverses the effect of the Supreme Court decision, unless that emergency legislation is drafted to exclude those individual challenges as well.”
Barrister and European law expert Martin Howe KC said: “Even if the UK courts ultimately allow removals to Rwanda, migrants’ lawyers can then make direct petitions to the Strasbourg court for an ‘interim indication’ against the deportation until the full hearing of their case – likely to be years late.” He added: “The Government now has the clear power to ignore future Strasbourg interim indications, but there is still a question mark over whether it has the robustness to do so and face the ensuing row.”
Yesterday Mr Sunak said “people’s patience has run thin” with the Rwanda legal “merry-go-round”.
He told a London college: “I’m completely committed to doing what is necessary to get those flights off and that scheme up and running. And I won’t let a foreign court stop us from getting flights off to Rwanda.”
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Asked whether Mr Sunak was having difficulty getting ministers to agree on a unified approach, his spokesman said: “No. The Prime Minister was very clear about the approach the Government is taking.”
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron told backbench MPs the Government must be prepared to do “whatever it takes” to end the small boats crisis.
But he said the UK must see how Strasbourg reacted to the new treaty with Rwanda and emergency laws before pushing to leave the ECHR.
The Daily Express understands Lord Cameron was “gently dismissive” of claims by his friend, ex-chancellor George Osborne, that leaving the ECHR was “basically off the table” now he was Foreign Secretary.
