Tory backbenchers urge PM to 'unilaterally withdraw' from Strasbourg

‘Time to quit the ECHR’: Tory backbenchers urge PM to ‘unilaterally withdraw’ from Strasbourg and push on with ‘stop the boats’ policy

• Tory backbencher Danny Kruger suggested Britain could ‘unilaterally withdraw’
• He also insisted Illegal Migration Bill should be ‘passed unamended’

Britain will have to quit the European human rights treaty if it cannot renegotiate its relationship with Strasbourg, senior Tories said last night.

In the wake of the Rwanda scheme being blocked by the courts, one Conservative MP called on Rishi Sunak to consider taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Tory backbencher Danny Kruger – an influential MP on the Right of the party – said that if the Government fails to secure international agreement to redraw the treaty, then Britain should ‘unilaterally withdraw’.

Mr Kruger said: ‘The Rwanda judgment is very disappointing. Following the decision this week to abandon the planned Bill of Rights Bill, the Government should seek to renegotiate the ECHR with our allies or, failing that, unilaterally withdraw and replace the ECHR with a new human rights framework.’

He added that the Government should ‘immediately secure whatever changes to Rwanda’s asylum system are needed to satisfy the court, and urgently appeal the decision at the Supreme Court’.

In the wake of the Rwanda scheme being blocked by the courts, one Conservative MP called on Rishi Sunak to consider taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

Mr Kruger also insisted that the Illegal Migration Bill – which contains wide-ranging restrictions on the asylum system – should be ‘passed unamended’. If the House of Lords attempts to block it, the legislation should be forced into law by the Parliament Act next spring, he added.

Other senior Conservatives also called for the UK to radically change its membership of the ECHR. Sir Edward Leigh – president of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs – told the Commons: ‘Every year we produce a migration Bill, every year we’re tied up in knots by human rights lawyers.

‘What we’ve been suggesting for two years in the Common Sense Group is that the Refugee Convention was made for a different world, as was the Human Rights Convention.

‘We simply have to have a derogation so that we can detain people and then deport them. We will never solve this problem otherwise.’

Tory backbencher Danny Kruger – an influential MP on the Right of the party – said that if the Government fails to secure international agreement to redraw the treaty, then Britain should ‘unilaterally withdraw’

Earlier, fellow Conservative MP Simon Clarke said: ‘We have to be able to tackle the awful people smuggling across the Channel.

‘If the ECHR continues to forestall this, we have to revisit the question of our membership.’ Ipswich MP Tom Hunt, deputy chairman of the Common Sense Group, called on ministers to begin drawing up a ‘radical Plan B’.

‘This week we’ve seen unelected individuals – the vast majority of whom have never had to live with the consequences of rampant illegal migration – set themselves against the express will of the British people for controlled migration,’ he said.

‘We need to develop a radical Plan B to be implemented before the general election in case the Government fails at the Supreme Court.’ Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tougher border control, also raised the prospect of dumping the treaty.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said during a Commons debate last night that Strasbourg’s actions had been ‘opaque, irregular and unfair when it comes to the will of the British people’

‘The Supreme Court should, without delay, have the final word,’ Mr Mehmet said. ‘Meanwhile, the traffickers will be rubbing their hands in glee.

‘Ultimately, if the stumbling block of the ECHR and the 1951 Refugee Convention remains then we should leave both.’

It is the second time the Rwanda scheme has been blocked by human rights laws. An inaugural charter flight to Rwanda had to be abandoned at the 11th hour last June after the European Court of Human Rights issued an interim injunction.

A single judge, sitting late at night, agreed to impose a so-called ‘Rule 39’ order which forced the Government to put the whole policy on hold.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said during a Commons debate last night that Strasbourg’s actions had been ‘opaque, irregular and unfair when it comes to the will of the British people’.

She added that the new Illegal Migration Bill contained measures which would ‘avoid that scenario repeating itself’.

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