Channel migrants will be banned from using rights laws to stay in UK

CHANNEL migrants will be barred from using human rights laws to avoid removal from Britain under measures to be unveiled by Suella Braverman.

Tough powers will be contained in the Home Secretary’s landmark immigration Bill due to be published early next week.

It will severely restrict the way claims under the Human Rights Act can be used by asylum seekers arriving by ‘irregular routes’ such as across the Channel, the Daily Mail understands.

In some cases, they will be allowed to lodge appeals only once they have been removed from this country.

The Bill is also expected to strengthen measures that allow asylum applications to be declared ‘inadmissible’.

Rishi Sunak has made ‘stopping the boats’ one of his five key pledges to voters.

In December he vowed that the Government would ‘make unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally you should not be able to remain here’.

The legislation, provisionally titled the Illegal Migration Bill, will make it easier for the Home Office to reject claims by small boat migrants.

Current Home Office rules say an asylum claim can be declared inadmissible ‘if the claimant was previously present in or had another connection to a safe third country... provided there is a reasonable prospect of removing them in a reasonable time to a safe third country’.

The guidance also sets out a number of complex stages that Home Office caseworkers must go through to declare a case inadmissible and gives a six-month timescale.

Claims are reviewed by two separate units within the Home Office – the National Asylum Allocation Unit and the Third Country Unit.

It is this system that is likely to be streamlined under the new legislation.

It was unclear last night whether the Bill will include measures to make it easier to remove migrants to Rwanda. Ministers want to avoid a repeat of the fiasco last year when an 11th-hour injunction by the European Court of Human Rights blocked the first charter flight to Rwanda from taking off.

The Bill of Rights, published last June, said ‘no account is to be taken of any interim measure issued by the European Court of Human Rights’.

However, the Bill of Rights was temporarily sent back to the drawing board under Liz Truss’s administration – and has still not been taken forward by Mr Sunak.

The Government’s Rwanda scheme, under which asylum seekers will be given a oneway ticket to the east African country, was declared lawful by judges in December but a series of legal appeals is likely.

The Bill will be published ahead of a key summit between the Prime Minister and French president Emmanuel Macron on Friday.

It comes after nearly 46,000 migrants crossed the Channel by small boat last year, compared with 28,500 in 2021. The package of legislation will strengthen existing laws setting out that anyone entering the UK illegally is committing a crime. It is thought this will help meet Mr Sunak’s pledge to ‘detain and swiftly remove’ anyone who arrives in Britain by irregular routes.

Ministers are expected to face a battle over the new laws. Human rights campaigners will almost certainly claim the inadmissibility measures and other aspects of the new Bill are a breach of international refugee conventions.

The legislation is also expected to tighten modern slavery laws that are being exploited by migrants to avoid removal and by criminal gangs to delay police investigations.

‘Detain and remove’

FOR all the praise that greeted his Northern Ireland deal, one problem for Rishi Sunak is that it has little electoral benefit. The blunt truth is, most voters simply shrug their shoulders.

That is emphatically not the case when it comes to the alarming rise in illegal migration across the Channel. Many view this as one of the most urgent issues facing the country.

The Prime Minister knows better than anyone that each image of people clambering out of a dinghy on the south coast dents Tory hopes of winning the next election.

So we eagerly await laws – expected to be announced next week – aimed at halting the tide of small boats bringing tens of thousands of migrants from France.

Tough powers ensuring no one arriving illegally can stay will be a disincentive. So will making it harder for failed asylum seekers to abuse human rights and modern slavery laws to avoid deportation.

With UK-EU relations more harmonious thanks to Mr Sunak’s Brexit deal, perhaps President Emmanuel Macron will be more amenable to taking back migrants. That would be a powerful deterrent.

Illegal migration is unfair on those who follow the rules, rewards criminal gangs, risks lives and strains public services.

Unless the PM stops this influx, he risks a backlash as voters blame the Tories for failing to take back control of our borders.