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LONDON — The U.K. unveiled its latest plan to stop asylum seekers crossing the English Channel Tuesday — with an admission the crackdown may bump up against human rights law.
A new Illegal Migration Bill aims to cut the number of people attempting the perilous journey across the English Channel from France by making it easier to detain and deport those arriving in the U.K.
Britain is also pitching an annual cap on asylum numbers over the longer-term.
More than 45,700 people used “small boats” to cross the Channel to the U.K. last year, the highest figure since records began. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made “stopping the boats” one of his key priorities as he looks to boost his party’s electoral fortunes.
Speaking in the House of Commons Tuesday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the U.K.’s plan would send a signal that “if you enter Britain illegally, you will be detained and swiftly removed,” and branded the current system no longer “fit for purpose.”
But the latest U.K. plan could face a bumpy ride through parliament and the courts, and Braverman acknowledged its “robust and novel” approach meant the government could not give “a definitive statement of compatibility” under the U.K.’s Human Rights Act.
That act incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into British law, and the new bill will include a so-called “section 19 (1) (b) statement” flagging potential incompatibility with the ECHR.
‘Overwhelmed’
Setting out the case for action, Braverman said the U.K. would “always support the world’s most vulnerable,” stressing that it had “given sanctuary to nearly half a million people” since 2015.
But she said the current volume of people coming to the U.K. had “overwhelmed our asylum system,” pointing to a six-figure backlog in unprocessed asylum claims. Faced with that, she argued, the “law-abiding patriotic majority” of people in Britain believe “enough is enough.”
The new bill will, she said, enable authorities to detain those arriving in the U.K. illegally across the Channel “without bail or judicial review within the first 28 days of detention.” The home secretary will be under a new legal duty to “remove illegal entrants,” and the routes to legal challenge that could halt removal will now “radically narrow,” Braverman promised.
“Only those under 18, medically unfit to fly, or at a real risk of serious and irreversible harm — an exceedingly high bar — in the country we are removing them to will be able to delay their removal,” she promised. “Any other claims will be heard remotely after removal.”
The U.K. is also promising to set up new safe routes for people who need to claim asylum, although the detail of these has yet to be announced. Braverman said that once the U.K. had “stopped the boats,” it will introduce a new annual cap set by parliament “on the number of refugees the U.K. will settle via safe and legal routes.”
Ministers have already signed a controversial agreement to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as a safe country, although none have so far been sent to the central African country amid legal challenge. In a call Monday night between Sunak and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, the pair “committed to continue working together to ensure this important partnership is delivered successfully,” according to a readout released by Downing Street.
Bruised by the legal challenge to the Rwanda plan — the first deportation flight to the country was paused last year after an 11th-hour intervention from the European Court of Human Rights — some Conservative MPs are pushing for the U.K. to quit the court altogether.
Tory MP Mark Francois told Braverman that while he “warmly” welcomed the principle of the new bill in tackling “immoral” people traffickers, the ECHR remained the “elephant in the room.”
He warned: “Unless we can somehow face them down, we will remain tied up in legal knots in our own domestic courts and ultimately, in Strasbourg.”
A Home Office note accompany Braverman’s statement said minors who come to the U.K. “illegally will not be removed to a safe third country until they turn 18,” under the plan.
But it pitched a “permanent ban” on returning to the U.K. for anyone previously prevented from settling in the country. “People who come here illegally will have their asylum claims deemed inadmissible and considered in a safe third country,” the department promised.
The government is also vowing to rein in the use of modern slavery law, designed to clampdown on human trafficking and forced labor, but which Braverman argued is “being abused to block removals.”
The opposition Labour Party charges that the latest plans are a reheat, and accused Braverman of allowing “criminal gangs to take hold along the Channel and along our border.”
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs: “This is deeply damaging chaos — and there is no point in ministers trying to blame anyone else. They’ve been in power 13 years. The asylum system is broken — and they broke it.”
