A contentious new law to stop small boats from crossing the English Channel has met a tidal wave of objections
Rishi Sunak’s government has been accused by the United Nations refugee agency of attempting to extinguish refugees’ right to seek protection in the United Kingdom after a contentious new bill which proposes to stop small boats from crossing the Channel was introduced in parliament.
Suella Braverman, the United Kingdom’s minister of home affairs, has admitted that the so-called to ‘illegal migration bill’ is likely to contravene human rights laws as being incompatible with convention rights, but her acknowledgement does not appear to have deterred the government from pressing ahead.
Under the bill, the law will place a legal duty on the government to detain and deport nearly all persons who arrive in the United Kingdom “irregularly”, such as via small boats across the English Channel. In addition, the bill places constraints on the rights of asylum seekers to use judicial review to challenge decisions made by the Home Office and others. The bill will introduce an annual cap on the number of refugees the United Kingdom will offer sanctuary to through safe and “legal” routes once the arrivals by boat have halted although this number is yet to be determined.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has advised that the bill is a clear breach of the refugee convention and undermines a longstanding British humanitarian traditions. The agency is “profoundly concerned” by the bill’s provisions, which give the British government the right to criminalise, detain and deport asylum seekers noting that, as presently drafted, it amounts to an asylum ban by extinguishing a person’s right to seek refugee protection regardless of how genuine and compelling their claim for asylum may be. The bill also denies persons the opportunity to put their case forward.
Because it impugns human rights, there are fears within the Conservative party that the bill could fail to pass the inevitable legal challenges that will be brought against it in the same manner the government’s recent plan to relocate asylum-seekers to Rwanda was stopped. Prime Minister Sunak has come under pressure from members of his own party to disengage from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) in the hopes of circumventing these legal issues as doubts remain about the bill’s ability to be enforced while the United Kingdom remains within the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR, which was drafted in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust to protect people from a misuse of state power, would breach the Good Friday agreement. Any decision to pull the United Kingdom out of the ECHR without an electoral mandate is likely to cause a political backlash and may itself be the subject of legal challenge in the House of Lords.
