Rwanda asylum flight was stopped Tuesday night after a last-minute intervention from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was disappointed, but that the decision wouldn’t stop her from implementing the plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda. Patel added the European Court of Human Rights’ decision to intervene was very surprising. She also pointed out that the European court did not say the UK policy was unlawful.
Patel insisted that Britain is a generous and welcoming country but that the UK’s ability to help asylum seekers has been undermined by those coming through the Channel illegally.
The decision came after the legal team representing one of the asylum seekers made a successful emergency application to ECHR.
Asked if the UK could withdraw from the European convention on human rights the spokesperson of PM Boris Johnson said:
We are keeping all options on the table including any further legal reforms that may be necessary. We will look at all of the legislation and processes in this round.
Asked on GB news whether Europe should be able to overrule decisions from British courts, Stephen Kinnock MP of the Labour Party said the European Court of Human Rights “does not trust Boris Johnson to bring people back from Rwanda.”
I think the European Court of Human Rights was saying that we don’t trust Boris Johnson to bring people back from Rwanda if that other case, which is concluding next month, finds the policy illegal. And the difference between the British courts and the European Court was simply one of do we trust the Prime Minister to actually obey the law if the ruling next month is against this policy, and that ruling, of course, is in British court. So it’s a matter of, you know, not trusting the Prime Minister to obey the law. And I think there’s absolutely mountains of evidence to demonstrate that this is a prime minister, who doesn’t have any respect for the rule of law. That raises serious questions about democracy functioning, if you don’t believe in the law you can’t really have a functioning democracy.
Stephen Kinnock MP
Daniel Kawczynski MP of the Conservative Party praised Patel’s “courage” to implement deportation policy and had criticized the ECHR’s intervention.
The fact that our supreme court decision is thwarted in this way means that it is time now to consider leaving the European convention on human rights.
Daniel Kawczynski MP
