The Telegraph, April 22, Martin Howe
We learn this week the government will amend its Illegal Immigration Bill to allow the Home Secretary to disregard interim rulings from the European Court of Human Rights when deciding to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda or other safe countries. Needless to say, this has provoked protests from the usual crowd of Left-leaning and Europhile lawyers, with the former Lord Chief Justice Thomas claiming that this is “a symbolic breach of the rule of law”.
There is indeed a threat to the rule of law, but it comes from a completely different direction.
The large scale arrival of migrants across the Channel has led to a complete break down of the UK’s ability to enforce our laws about who is and who is not allowed to come and live here. Many of those who cross are economic migrants and not genuine refugees at all. Even those who originally had a claim to be refugees when they left their country of origin should have claimed refuge in the first safe country they reached, and not in the UK after passing through France and other countries as well.
But at the moment, our legal and administrative systems are incapable of removing migrants from the UK, even where all appeals have been exhausted and they have been found to have no right to be here. The migrants and the people traffickers know this, which is why they keep on coming despite the dangers of the journey.
Last year, the government introduced its plan to remove illegal migrants to Rwanda where their claims to refugee status would be considered in a safe environment, but where they would not have access to the economic benefits of living in the UK. Our courts carefully considered the legalities of this plan, and all courts up to the Supreme Court refused to grant an interim injunction to a group of migrants to stop them being put on a plane to Rwanda.
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