Leaving the ECHR is ‘not necessary’, says Cameron

Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is not “necessary” to prevent small boat crossings, Lord David Cameron has said amid divisions among Tories over Britain’s membership of the treaty.

But the foreign secretary appeared to have agreed to a return deal with France to break up people smuggling gangs. This is “simply not possible” because of “the situation we find ourselves in”.

It comes as Rishi Sunak’s bill aimed at blocking further setbacks in the government’s controversial deportation program in Rwanda was passed by parliament after months of wrangling between MPs and peers.

While the legislation is now on the verge of becoming law, ministers are prepared for legal challenges to the plan and the judiciary has made 25 courtrooms available to hear cases.

The prime minister previously hinted that he would be willing to leave the ECtHR if it prevented him from carrying out his policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

But on ITV’s Peston Show, Lord Cameron said: “I don’t think it’s necessary to leave the ECHR, I don’t think it needs to happen for this policy to work.”

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the scheme gave rise to the belief that migrants sent to Kigali are at risk of ill-treatment as a result of their return to their country of origin.

Refoulement, which forces an asylum seeker to return to a country where he is likely to face persecution, is prohibited by a number of international treaties, including not only the ECHR, but also the UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against Torture and the UN International Convention on the Suppression of Torture. Civil and political rights.

These treaties were brought into British domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998, the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004.

On whether he would have continued this policy while prime minister, he said: “We had a completely different situation because (we) could send people straight back to France.

“I would like that situation to be the case again, that is the most sensible thing. People land on a beach in Kent, you take them straight back to France, breaking the model of people smugglers. That is currently not available. It’s just not possible.”

When asked if this was because of Brexit, he said: “Because of the situation we are in, because of the attitude of others and everything else.”

Meanwhile, Home Secretary James Cleverly said criticism of the ECtHR’s Rwanda bill, which he “hugely appreciates”, is “out of line”.

“There is a real moral danger in telling a national government that it cannot manage its own borders, that it cannot make decisions about who lives in its own country and who does not,” he said during a speech at a think tank in Rome. .

“Because that undermines the integrity of the democratic process in which we live.”