Thursday 16 June 2022 11:13 PM Rwanda: Dominic Rabb pledges to rip up Labour's Human Rights Act trends now
A new Bill of Rights designed to speed up the removal of Channel migrants is expected to be unveiled next week.
Dominic Raab confirmed yesterday the legislation would include measures to effectively ignore injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights.
Such orders by judges based in Strasbourg were used to ground Tuesday night’s inaugural flight to Rwanda. However, peers are expected to block key reforms to the proposed major legislation.
Members of the Lords said it was likely to face ‘lots of opposition’ despite it being a Government manifesto commitment.
Justice Secretary Dominic Rabb, pictured, is planning to introduce a Bill of Rights which will allow the government to ignore injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights when it comes to forcibly removing asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing
The government had chartered a Boeing 767 from a Spanish airline to take a group of men who arrived on the Kent coast so their asylum claims could be processed in Rwanda
But a last minute intervention by the Strasbourg-based court prevented the flight from taking off
Justice Secretary Mr Raab’s remarks came after yesterday’s Mail revealed he was examining the possibility of disregarding last-minute Strasbourg injunctions.
But he said the UK would stay within the European Convention on Human Rights, following calls from Tory backbenchers for the UK to leave the treaty. ‘I don’t think that either in this case or in general it is right for the Strasbourg court to assume a power of injunction and then apply it,’ said Mr Raab, who is also Deputy Prime Minister.
‘It’s not grounded in the Convention and I don’t think it’s right as a matter of policy. ‘I certainly believe they should not have a legally-binding effect under UK law.’
He said it would not be possible to ignore the measures while the Human Rights Act remains in force. But he added that ‘we will address this squarely with the Bill of Rights’, which will replace Labour’s widely-loathed law.
The Bill will also contain measures to make it easier to carry out deportations and other types of removals. For example, it is expected to curtail use of the ‘right to private and family life’ by foreign offenders.
Conservative peer
