Prime minister says he is prepared to ‘revisit legal frameworks’ to stop the boats as supreme court says policy is unlawful
Reed says the court has had to decide whether the Rwanda policy breaches the non-refoulement rule.
The policy is in the Home Office’s immigration rules, he says.
Continue reading...At least six MPs to submit letter of no confidence, says Andrea Jenkyns, who has already submitted her own
Rishi Sunak is facing a fresh backlash from rightwing Conservative MPs who are pushing for emergency legislation to overrule the supreme court’s decision on the UK government’s Rwanda deportation plan.
At least six MPs will submit letters of no confidence in the prime minister, according to Andrea Jenkyns, a rebel backbencher who has already submitted her own.
Continue reading...Six Portuguese young people claim inadequate policies to tackle global heating breach their human rights
A key plank of the UK government’s defence against the biggest climate legal action in the world next week has fallen away as a result of the U-turn by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on green policies.
The UK is one of 32 countries being taken to the European court of human rights on Wednesday by a group of Portuguese young people. They will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court that the nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.
Continue reading...Home secretary calls the court ‘politicised’ and refuses to rule out mass tagging of asylum seekers
Suella Braverman has reiterated her wish to leave what she called the “politicised” European court of human rights (ECHR) and refused to rule out the mass tagging of asylum seekers, a move one refugee charity said would treat people as “mere objects”.
Marking a return to the political fray after a summer recess in which a series of Home Office policy hiccups prompted speculation she could be replaced as home secretary, Braverman said the government would “do whatever it takes” to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Continue reading...Home secretary confirms government considering fitting some migrants with electronic tags
Suella Braverman has said the government will “do whatever it takes” if its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is “thwarted in Strasbourg”, and confirmed the government is considering fitting some migrants with electronic tags.
In an interview with the BBC, the home secretary stepped up her attack on the European court of human rights (ECHR), calling it politicised and interventionist.
Continue reading...Moderate Tories fear the party’s attack on human rights will alienate many voters and damage the UK’s global standing
The Conservatives risk being seen once again as the “nasty party” by trying to win votes with a divisive attack on human rights, senior party figures have warned.
Rishi Sunak is under increasing pressure from his party this weekend over his pledge to stop the boats crossing the Channel. It follows another week that ended in Channel deaths after the capsizing of a boat, while the total number of people making the dangerous crossing since 2018 rose above the 100,000 mark.
Continue reading...Robert Jenrick had said government would do ‘whatever is necessary’ to stop small boat crossings
The UK would be an international outlier along with Russia and Belarus if it left the European convention on human rights, a leading law body has warned, after a senior minister signalled that the move could be an option to stop small boat crossings.
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said the government would do “whatever is necessary”, even if that meant pulling out of the ECHR, the 70-year-old pan-European treaty that protects human rights and political freedoms in the continent.
Continue reading...Sunak insists Rwanda is safe country to be sent to after court rules in favour of charities and 10 asylum seekers
The bitter legal battle over the government’s flagship immigration policy is set to reach new heights after Downing Street insisted it would fight to overturn a ruling that sending refugees to Rwanda was unlawful.
Charities and others were jubilant on Thursday after judges at the court of appeal ruled in favour of campaign groups and 10 affected asylum seekers, while the opposition claimed the policy at heart of Rishi Sunak’s “Stop the Boats” pledge was now unravelling.
Continue reading...President of Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly says UK faces exclusion if it choses to ignore its obligations. This live blog is now closed
Today the BBC is reporting that Javad Marandi, a businessman whose foreign companies were part of a global money laundering investigation, is a major donor to the Conservative party. Marandi, who strongly denies wrongdoing and who is not subject to criminal sanctions, has been named after losing a legal battle with the BBC to protect his anonymity.
There will be an urgent question on the case at 12.30pm, tabled by the SNP MP Alison Thewliss. According to the Commons authorities, she has tabled a question asking a Home Office minister to make a statement “on the implications of the National Crime Agency’s investigation into Mr Javad Marandi”.
Rishi Sunak’s food summit is little more than a stunt to hide years of inaction from his government.
The Tories’ shambolic handling of food security has resulted in huge vegetable price increases across the country.
No ifs, no buts, supermarkets must cut these basic prices now.
Rishi Sunak needs to grow a spine and stand up for struggling families and pensioners by demanding supermarkets slash prices. They have no excuses, wholesale prices are down, yet food prices are up, with their profits soaring.
Continue reading...Theresa May had warned bill will cause more people to be consigned to modern slavery while Geoffrey Cox also raised concerns. This blog is now closed
Q: [From Matthew Barber, the police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley] What can the Home Office do to cut bureaucracy for the police?
Braverman says, if someone is having a mental health crisis, there should be a healthcare response, not a police response. She says police officers are having to spend too much time in hospital with people.
Continue reading...Former head of judiciary says move by UK could amount to ‘symbolic breach of the rule of law’
Ministers have been warned by a former head of the judiciary that plans to let the UK ignore rulings from the European court of human rights (ECHR) on small boat crossings could be defeated in the House of Lords.
John Thomas, who was lord chief justice of England and Wales from 2013 to 2017, said the move would probably amount to a “symbolic breach of the rule of law”.
Continue reading...Group of Swiss women and French ex-mayor suing their governments in first such cases heard by rights court
The governments of Switzerland and France have been accused of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not acting decisively enough on climate change, at a landmark legal hearing in Strasbourg.
A panel of judges at the European court of human rights heard petitions from a group of Swiss women and a French former mayor seeking to bolster climate action in their countries. Although climate litigation has spread quickly around the world, these are the first such cases to be heard by the ECHR.
Continue reading...Kit Malthouse tells home secretary of risks of moving substance from legitimate market into the illegitimate market
As Alex Wickham from Politico points out, the questions Rishi Sunak is getting this morning suggest this audience is not happy with the government’s record on crime.
Q: The Conservatives have “dropped the ball a little bit, to be honest”. The questioner says laughing gas is the least of their problems. People are using much harder drugs. He has skimmed through the action plan document. Some of it is good. But punishments need to be firmer. People probably won’t turn up for community sentences. And the government needs to tackle drugs at source.
Continue reading...Home secretary’s claims of ‘constructive’ talks regarding Strasbourg’s injunctions disputed by legal scholars
Legal experts have cast doubt on the UK’s claims of “possible reforms” to European court of human rights procedures that stopped an asylum seeker from being deported to Rwanda last year.
During a two-day visit to the country’s capital, Kigali, Suella Braverman told a selected group of government-friendly papers that she was “encouraged” by the government’s “constructive” talks with Strasbourg to overhaul court injunctions. An ECHR injunction last June prevented an Iraqi national from being deported from the UK to the east African country.
Continue reading...UNHCR says bill extinguishes the right to seek refugee protection in the UK for those who arrive irregularly
Downing Street has said that Rishi Sunak is going to Dover to meet frontline officers dealing with small boat crossings. He will then return to London for a press conference later in the afternoon.
One of the questions raised by Rishi Sunak’s small boats bill – or illegal migration bill, to give it its formal name – is to what extent ministers believe it will work, and to what extent they are not that bothered about whether it works because they believe that, if it fails, they will be able to use this in election campaign against Labour.
Unlike Labour who have voted against taking action on this issue, this government has a plan to break the business model of people smugglers.
A plan to do what’s fair for those at home and those who have a legitimate claim to asylum – a plan to take back control of our borders once and for all.
Labour and others who oppose these measures are betraying hard-working Brits up and down the country - they don’t have any answers themselves but they will still seek to block us in parliament.
Continue reading...Latest updates: prime minister faces Labour leader ahead of industrial action by nurses on Thursday
Yesterday Mark Harper, the transport secretary, claimed that public support for the rail strikes was declining. Today Ipsos has published some polling that backs up this claim, although support for the RMT has not collapsed, and public opinion is still divided. It puts support for the strikes at 30%, down from 43% in September. And opposition to the strikes is at 36%, up from 31%.
Yesterday Savanta published polling showing a similar trend. It said that net support for the rail workers on strike was +21 in October (those supporting them, minus those not supporting them), and that now it was down to +13.
Continue reading...Representatives of Eurosceptic insist he had been left with no option but to appeal to European court of human rights
Lawyers for Owen Paterson have admitted the irony of the former MP bringing a case against the UK government at the European court of human rights, despite having previously called on Britain to “break free” of the court entirely.
Representatives for Paterson, a prominent Eurosceptic Conservative who resigned last year in the midst of a lobbying scandal, issued a statement on Monday insisting he had been left with no option but to appeal to a court whose authority he had previously questioned.
Continue reading...Man says state prison failed to provide adequate diet, in appeal joined by former psychiatric patient
Switzerland has been challenged at the European court of human rights over a failure to provide adequate vegan diets to a prisoner and a patient at the psychiatric ward of a hospital, in a case that could lead to veganism being interpreted as a protected characteristic under the right of freedom of conscience across geographic Europe.
The court, which is part of the Council of Europe and not the EU, this week formally asked its member state Switzerland to respond to the two complaints that Swiss state institutions had failed to provide a totally vegan diet to two applicants while they were in prison and in a hospital psychiatric unit respectively.
Continue reading...Couple sought redress from European court of human rights after libel case against detective was overturned
The parents of Madeleine McCann have lost their European court of human rights challenge to the Portuguese supreme court’s decision to throw out their libel case against a former detective who implicated them in their daughter’s disappearance.
Kate and Gerry McCann sued Gonçalo Amaral, who led the botched police search for Madeleine in 2007, over statements he made in a book, documentary and newspaper interview alleging that they were involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Continue reading...Families argued detention in Syria exposed the two women and their children to inhumane treatment
The European court of human rights has condemned France over its refusal to repatriate French women who travelled to Syria with their partners to join Islamic State and are currently being held with their children at Kurdish-run prison camps.
The ruling will be studied closely by other countries who still have citizens detained in camps in north-eastern Syria, including the UK.
Continue reading...