Migrants are taken to Dungeness in Kent on board an RNLI lifeboat – a figure for arrivals in 'small boats'; last year there were 40,000 Photo: JORDAN PETTITT/PA
Rishi Sunak will only solve the small courts crisis if he withdraws the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights, says a former home secretary.
In an online article for The Telegraph, Sarah Dines, who was home secretary until November last year, said the UK would not be able to stop “unprecedented” legal migration, prevent illegal Channel crossings or control the UK's borders without leaving the ECHR. /p>
She called on Rishi Sunak to follow through on his proposal this week that he is willing to quit the ECHR if it blocks his deportation scheme from Rwanda by introducing emergency legislation to get it passed.
“We need to solve the problem now. It is possible to pass a very short and simple emergency law, giving six months' notice of withdrawal from the convention, as required by Article 58,” she said.
“If this fails, put the issue of who controls our borders at the center of the Conservative election manifesto later this year.”
The Prime Minister said earlier this week that controlling immigration is more important than “membership in a foreign court.” The comment was seen as Mr Sunak's strongest hint yet that he could support leaving the ECHR, despite pressure from right-wing MPs.
Last year Rishi Sunak boarded a Border Agency boat in Dover to check measures being taken to end the “small craft crisis”. Photo: WPA POOL
Ms Dines said the ECHR had become highly politicized because it had been hijacked by “political activists intent on turning the court into an experiment in social engineering.”
“At least 22 of the 100 Strasbourg judges who served between 2009 and 2019 are either former employees or employees of the seven non-governmental human rights organizations that are active in the court. Pseudo-legal decisions of the European Court have led to checks being written on the accounts of British taxpayers.
“Every application for refugee status or entry into the United Kingdom is the result of Strasbourg's ever-expanding interpretation of the Convention” of human rights, and is also approved or quickly monitored by the government There are financial consequences to a service being held captive by the human rights industry.
“We all know about the £8 million a day cost of housing illegal migrants on 'small boats', which will cost £6 billion over the next two years. This is the tip of a financial iceberg largely created by Strasbourg and borne by taxpayers.”
Nigel Farage, meanwhile, said he did not believe Mr Sunak. “Is he saying he just wants to look at it, or is he saying he’s actually going to do something?” – he asked.
“He says that if it came to that, and the ECHR blocked the Rwandan scheme, we would “consider” a way out, yes. So, we will “think” about leaving. No – we'll leave. No – we will give the British people a referendum.”
It's time to stop dithering and abandon the Strasbourg trial.
The Prime Minister's recent announcement that he was determined to “stop the boats” was “more important than membership in a foreign court” should be welcomed.
But we must go beyond rhetoric. In 2018, then Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced a “major incident” when 250 arrivals crossed the English Channel. Last year the number of “little boats” arrived was 40,000.
The reality, however, is that Rishi Sunak is focused on only one of the three political elephants gradually squeezing the life out of the Conservative MPs they have driven into corner of Westminster Tea Room.
The second elephant is that, as well as a growing number of 'illegal' small boat arrivals, we are now also facing a perfect storm of astonishing levels of unprecedented 'legal' immigration into the UK. The latest data shows that net migration increased the population by a record 745,000 people in the year to December 2022.
More than 1.2 million new people have entered the UK in the past two years. New estimates from the Office for National Statistics show that migration will add 6.1 million people to the population by 2036. By this time the population could reach almost 74 million. Mass migration is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. This is a problem facing countries, governments and politicians in the European Union and beyond.
The third elephant in the tea room is the European Convention on Human Rights itself, as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights. All roads regarding legal and illegal migration lead back to the Strasbourg court. Great Britain became a laboratory for political activists in Strasbourg. The cost to British taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of “legal” migrants sanctioned by Strasbourg will reach many billions of pounds.
This is now an existential problem for the UK as we know it today, and for the Conservative Party which is in the latter's cabin chance from the British voter's point of view. The jurisdiction of the European Court over the United Kingdom is a Gordian knot that needs to be cut.
We will not be able to stop unprecedented “legal” immigration into Britain until we leave the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. We will not be able to stop the “small boats” until we leave the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. We will not be able to control and secure our borders until we leave the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. The time for navel-gazing procrastination is over.
Sarah Dines, Conservative MP for Derbyshire, is calling on the Prime Minister to break the European Convention on Human Rights. Photo: DAVID WOLFALL
We don't need to say much about Britain's continued membership of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. We've already had this. The European Court of Human Rights is not a court dispensing the type of justice that the average British citizen would expect and accept, but must be seen as a dubious court run amok, staffed by ersatz judges ideologically committed to delivering completely unacceptable decisions aimed at social engineering and open borders, not judicial decisions. The need to withdraw from the Strasbourg court is obvious and has been formulated by several prime ministers.
Back in 1995, John Major declared the Strasbourg court's decisions “outrageous” and an “unjustifiable affront to common sense”, putting Britain in a “totally unacceptable” position. He stated that he was ready to consider the possibility of derogating from the convention. He decided not to do this. Despite incorporating the convention into British law through his disastrous Human Rights Act 1998, Tony Blair then found himself denouncing the decisions as an “abuse of common sense” which he said may need to be corrected by more primary legislation.
In 2006, The Sun reported that “[Blair] wants the government to have the power to overturn ludicrous judges' decisions that put the so-called rights of criminals ahead of the rights of their victims. The Prime Minister says it is one of his “most pressing policy priorities.” Blair said that “the rules of the game are changing.” They are not. In 2007, Gordon Brown said he was “unprepared to accept a situation in our country where people break the rules and we cannot act.” It turns out that he was ready for this after all.
David Cameron made it clear in 2015 that the UK would withdraw from the convention if it did not get the changes it wanted: “We are very clear about what we want. , that is, British judges make decisions in British courts.”
Theresa May noted in 2016 that “The ECHR may tie the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals – and does nothing to change the attitude of governments like Russia's when This is about human rights.” Mrs May concluded: “If we want to reform human rights laws in this country… we should go… the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court.” She blinked first.
Boris Johnson said that “all options are on the table” and, unfortunately, that’s where they are left. Liz Truss said she too was “ready to walk away” from the court but did not. Rishi Sunak also addressed the elephant in the room: “The ECHR cannot limit our ability to properly control our borders, and we must not allow it to.” The jury, so to speak, is still out on this one. The reality is that British Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries have led the British people up a mountain on several occasions, only to lead us down again.
To mitigate the fallout, the Conservative Party was in coalition with Strasbourg fans, the Liberal Democrats, from 2010-2015, and after liberation in 2015, Britain's focus shifted to Brexit, itself a response to open borders in the heart of the EU . Social and economic project of the European Union. As successive governments have dithered, the European Court has become the target of institutional hijacking by political activists intent on turning it into an experiment in social engineering.
At least 22 of the 100 Strasbourg judges who served between 2009 and 2019 are either former employees or employees of the seven non-governmental human rights organizations that are active in the court. Pseudo-legal decisions of the European Court led to checks being written on the accounts of British taxpayers.
Every application for refugee status or entry into the UK, arising from Strasbourg's ever-expanding interpretation of Convention “rights” and rubber-stamped or expedited by a civil service in thrall to the human rights industry, has financial consequences. We all know about the £8 million a day it costs to house illegal migrants on 'small boats', which will cost £6 billion over the next two years.
This is the tip of a financial iceberg largely created by Strasbourg and carried by taxpayers already acutely aware of the resulting pressures on the NHS, public housing, the rental market and schools. Between late 2019 and early 2022, the number of asylum seekers in hotels increased 25-fold. In 2023, around 93,300 people applied for asylum in the UK. The cost of housing 120,000 asylum seekers, whose presence and unrestricted rights are also facilitated by the Strasbourg Agreement, could reach £11 billion a year, the court has ruled. The cost to taxpayers of the hundreds of thousands of “legal” migrants sanctioned by Strasbourg runs into many billions of pounds.
Despite the dubious court's dressing them up in legalese, the simple fact is that the mass migration imposed on the UK by Strasbourg is economically and socially unsustainable. Government-endorsed Ukrainian and Hong Kong-Chinese schemes aside, Strasbourg's flexible regulations in one form or another are largely responsible, directly or indirectly, for migration to a city the size of Leeds that entered the UK last year.
Georges Ravarani, a Strasbourg judge, explained the court's fundamental principle very convincingly: “The court's case law suggests that, in practice, the values enshrined in the convention are exported throughout the world and apply not only to 800 million people, but to seven billion.”< /p>
Brexit was triggered in part by the British public's fears that membership of the European Union would allow several hundred million European Union citizens to migrate legally to the UK. As Judge Ravarani makes clear, if any of the seven billion people he mentioned above make it to Britain, legally or illegally, they will be able to demand greater socio-economic rights not as agreed by British legislators, but as granted to them unilaterally. and is interpreted by politically active foreign judges.
Elizabeth I's speech to her troops at Tilbury in 1588 comes to mind: “Think that Parma, Spain, or any other prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my kingdom.”
Today Britain faces another armada; one arrives by plane, truck and small boat. The Strasbourg princes, aided and abetted by regiments of human rights lawyers and organized international crime gangs, are facilitating unsustainable mass migration to the UK.
My advice to the government is clear. We must solve the problem now. It is possible to pass a very short and simple emergency law, giving six months' notice of withdrawal as required by Article 58.
Otherwise, put the question of who controls our borders on the back burner. the heart of the Conservative election manifesto later this year.
Sarah Dines is the Conservative MP for the Derbyshire Dales
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