UK needs 'crucial power' in migrant boat cases

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has described her plans to prevent European judges from being able to block the deportations of migrants arriving in small boats as a “crucial power”.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, she said that for Britain to be “truly sovereign” it needed to be able to “decide who enters our territory and on what terms”.

Ms Braverman is pushing through Parliament the Illegal Migration Bill, which is designed to make it more difficult for domestic and international courts to have a say in how the UK Government controls the country's borders.

With the proposed legislation due to return to Parliament next week, she has urged MPs to bring the bill “into force as soon as possible so we can stop the boats”.

Cutting back the number of people who reach Britain by crossing the English Channel, often in unseaworthy boats, has become a high-profile, high priority issue for the ruling Conservatives.

One of the changes the Home Secretary wants to make to the bill is that ministers would be able to decide whether or not to accept a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights.

“Our bill will now give ministers a broad discretion whether to comply with interim measures in individual cases,” Ms Braverman said.

“This is a crucial power. At the same time, we are continuing to engage in constructive dialogue with Strasbourg on possible reforms to their process around interim measures.”

The bill could also prevent UK courts from hearing a legal challenge to deportation from someone deemed to have arrived unlawfully unless that person is at risk of serious and irreversible harm, such as death or persecution.

“Only people who are aged under 18, are medically unfit to fly, or face real risk of serious and irreversible harm in the country we are removing them to will be able to delay their removal,” said Mrs Braverman.

“Any other legal claims will be heard remotely, after removal, in a safe country such as Rwanda.

“And modern slavery laws, which have increasingly become a target for abuse by those seeking to avoid removal, will be tightened.”

The Illegal Migration Bill amounts to an “asylum ban” that will prevent people fleeing war and persecution from seeking refuge in the UK, the UN's refugee agency has said.

A record 45,756 people crossed the English Channel last year, according to official figures, up from the 28,526 recorded for 2021.

In 2018, there were 299 people. In 2019 there were 1,843 and in 2020 the number rose again to 8,466, according to Home Office data.