Fears grow that Whitehall and judges will unite to foil Sunak's asylum rights ... trends now
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The Prime Minister is heading for a 'civil war' with the country's most senior law officer over plans to hold migrants without a hearing into their claim and strip them of their right to claim asylum, senior Home Office sources say.
With Tory MPs increasingly fearful that the Government's failure to tackle the small boats crisis will cost them the next election, Rishi Sunak is planning to write the revolutionary measures into the forthcoming Illegal Migration Bill to overturn decades of asylum law.
However, the sources say that Attorney General Victoria Prentis has warned No 10 that moves to allow migrants to be detained without having their case heard for three months – when the maximum permitted for terrorism suspects is 28 days – would 'never get through the courts'.
Rishi Sunak is planning to write the revolutionary measures into the forthcoming Illegal Migration Bill to overturn decades of asylum law
Separately, Home Office officials are understood to have argued that plans to disapply the right of migrants to claim asylum when they have arrived here illegally would break international laws established with the 1951 Refugee Convention.
This defined 'refugee' as someone unable or unwilling to return to their country of nationality 'owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion'.
'Rishi's determined to push this through, but with judges and civil servants so opposed it could turn into civil war,' the Home Office source added.
The Government argues that the majority of those using small boats on the Channel to enter the UK are economic migrants.
