We face oblivion if we fail to get a deal done, warns Suella
SUELLA Braverman has fired a fresh salvo at Rishi Sunak from the backbenches – warning that the Tories face ‘electoral oblivion’ within months if they fail to implement the Rwanda plan.
Before the emergency legislation was published yesterday evening, the former home secretary demanded that Parliament be prepared to sit through Christmas to pass the Bill if necessary and told ministers to build ‘Nightingale-style’ detention centres to house illegal migrants.
She also savaged the human rights framework for ‘producing insanities that the public would scarcely believe’.
Mrs Braverman, who was sacked from her Cabinet job last month, delivered the warnings in a personal statement to the Commons on ‘mass, uncontrolled, illegal immigration’.
She said leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was not the only way to ‘cut the Gordian knot’ and stop the boats.
Setting out her tests for emergency laws to revive the Rwanda plan, Mrs Braverman said new legislation must address the Supreme Court’s concerns about the safety of Rwanda.
And she said it must enable flights before the next election by ‘blocking off all routes of challenge’.
‘The powers to detain and remove must be exercisable notwithstanding the Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and all other international law,’ she added.
Mrs Braverman said the Bill should enable removals to take place within days of people arriving legally and must enable the ‘administrative detention of illegal arrivals until they are removed’.
‘And, just as we rapidly built Nightingale hospitals to deal with Covid, so we must build Nightingale-style detention facilities to deliver the necessary capacity.
‘Greece and Turkey have done so and the only way to do this, as I advocated for in government, is with support from the Ministry of Defence.
‘And fifth, Parliament must be prepared to sit over Christmas to get this Bill done.
‘All of this comes down to a simple question: who governs Britain? Where does ultimate authority for the UK lie?
‘Is it with the British people and their elected representatives or is it in the vague, shifting and unaccountable concept of “international law”?’
Mrs Braverman then warned it was ‘now or never’ to present a Bill that ‘reflects public fury on illegal migration and actually stops the boats’.
She said: ‘The Conservative Party faces electoral oblivion in a matter of months if we introduce yet another Bill destined to fail. Do we fight for sovereignty or do we let our party die?’
Mrs Braverman also revealed that she previously voiced her concerns over the Illegal Migration Act – at one stage suggesting the latter legislation should have been scrapped in favour of a ‘more robust alternative that excluded international and human rights laws’. She said: ‘Previous attempts have failed because they did not address the root cause of the problem: expansive human rights laws flowing from the European Convention on Human Rights, replicated in Labour’s Human Rights Act, are being interpreted elastically by courts domestic and foreign to literally prevent our Rwanda plan from getting off the ground. And this problem relates to so much more than just illegal arrivals.’
She added: ‘ From my time as home secretary, I can say that the same human rights framework is producing insanities that the public would scarcely believe.
‘ Foreign terrorists we can’t deport – because of their human rights. Terrorists that we have to let back in – because of their human rights.
‘ Foreign rapists and paedophiles who should have been removed but are released back into the community only to reoffend – because of their human rights.’
Last night, a veteran Tory MP told the Mail the view among MPs was that Mrs Braverman ‘ repeated what she had said before, but it is time to move on’.
‘The die-hards around her will cheer, but many others will say, “You’ve made your point, now stay silent, let’s move on – we’ve got an election to fight”,’ they said. But another senior backbencher said: ‘That is one of the punchiest personal statements I have seen in years.’
‘Sit over Christmas if necessary’
‘Do we let our party die?’