We risk becoming a pariah nation on human rights

Criminals tend not to pre-announce their plans for perfidy but in the case of this government, it seems to be something of a habit. Not so very long ago a government minister, Brandon Lewis, got up in the House of Commons and declared that the UK fully intended to unilaterally renounce parts of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement and infamously admitted that “yes this does break international law in a very specific and limited way”.

Now the prime minister is reportedly ready to do exactly the same with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Ministers are said to be considering options for clauses that can be added to new legislation in order to ensure deportations go ahead in breach of the ECHR, should the UK courts or Strasbourg so determine. Indeed, if the ECHR (nothing to do with the EU so still relevant to the UK) has the audacity to do its job and rule against the UK, then the UK will withdraw from it.

This is hardly an example to set for other nations who wilfully break international law and defile human rights. It’s especially shaming because Winston Churchill was one of the guiding powers behind the ECHR, and Britain was a proud founding

signatory in 1951. It was only a few years after the Holocaust, and the mood in Europe then was “never again”.

Those who despise the ECHR, many nominally Conservatives, would do well to remember the honourable role British policymakers and Tories played in framing it, and the principle that human rights are indivisible, universal and not to be rationed.

It is, frankly, shameful that the UK resents receiving a relatively modest proportion of Europe’s refugees, in terms of its overall population, compared with most of its European neighbours. It need not be so. In 2015 Germany proudly welcomed 1 million Syrian asylum seekers into the federal republic, partly as atonement for its past. “We can do this” Angela Merkel declared, and Germany did. Sweden, Italy, France and Poland also have a strong record.

It cannot be right that the UK should join Russia and Belarus outside the ECHR, a pariah nation in human rights terms. Human rights are for everyone, and not just for refugees. If migrants can be deprived of their rights to life, a fair trial and freedom of expression, then so can anyone else in the UK.

The experience of the first half of the 20th century proved to European leaders that any nation can fall under the spell of dictatorship and its people become persecuted. The need for an external, international restraint was demonstrable. The British ought not to be so arrogant as to imagine that they do not need the ECHR; and numerous judgements against the British state, grumpily accepted, reinforce that point.

If the draconian laws currently being discussed are eventually passed, and the threat to the ECHR is carried through, then Britain will have all but abolished the right to claim asylum. That was the outcome effectively outlined in Rishi Sunak’s keynote speech on immigration in December. Aside from special Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghan settlement schemes, anyone who arrives irregularly will be refused asylum in the UK, regardless of whether they are genuine refugees.

Yet there will be very few safe and secure routes for asylum seekers, and the ones that will be set up, in conjunction with the UN High Commission for Refugees, will be subject to a quota. The annual quota on numbers will be set by parliament in consultation with local authorities to determine capacity, though amendable in the face of humanitarian emergencies. We may expect the quota to be inadequate for the task.

Britain will not only have more or less abolished the right to asylum, but criminalised those who try to claim it. Ministers, in their evidence to the Commons select committee on the subject, cannot yet say whether the new strictures will apply to children, to family members seeking reunification, or if family groups arriving will be split up. Nor can they say how many will be deported to Rwanda to have their claims assessed, nor what other, alternative destinations might be available for those seeking shelter from persecution.

It is not a sustainable policy in any case. Even criminalising refugees will be no deterrent to many desperately seeking a new life. All that will happen is that they will attempt more clandestine landings, evade the authorities and not try to even claim asylum. Once in the UK, they will effectively be the slaves of the people smugglers.

The government’s plans mean that there will be even less control than there is now. Morally, legally and practically, abolishing the right to asylum is a gruesome project that is bound to fail. It cannot stand.

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