‘Exit from ECHR is the only way to solve small boats crisis’

Rishi Sunak will only solve the small boats crisis if he takes Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), says a former home office minister.

In an online article for The Telegraph, Sarah Dines, who was a home office minister until November last year, said Britain would be unable to stop “unprecedented” legal migration, prevent illegal Channel crossings or control the UK’s borders without leaving the ECHR.

She urged Rishi Sunak to follow through on his suggestion this week that he was prepared to quit the ECHR if it blocked his Rwanda deportation scheme by introducing emergency legislation to enact it.

“We have got to solve the problem now. A very short, simple piece of emergency legislation can be passed, giving the six months’ notice of withdrawal from the convention as required by article 58,” she said.

“Failing that, place the question of who controls our borders at the heart of the Conservative election manifesto later this year.”

The Prime Minister said earlier this week that controlling immigration is more important than “membership of a foreign court”. The comment was seen as Mr Sunak’s strongest hint yet that he could back leaving the ECHR, in the face of pressure from Right-wing MPs to do so.

Ms Dines claimed the ECHR had become highly politicised by being captured by “political activists intent on turning the court into a social engineering experiment”.

“At least 22 of the 100 Strasbourg judges who served between 2009 and 2019 are either former employees or associates of seven non-governmental human rights organisations that are highly active before the court. The European court’s pseudo-legal rulings have resulted in the writing of cheques on the British taxpayers’ account.

“Every claim for refugee status or entry into the United Kingdom resulting from Strasbourg’s ever expanding interpretation of convention ‘rights’, and rubber-stamped or fast-tracked by a civil service in thrall to the human rights industry, has a cost implication

“We all know of the £8 million a day for housing illegal ‘small boats’ migrants, something which is set to cost £6 billion over the next two years. This is the tip of the fiscal iceberg created in large part by Strasbourg and borne by taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage said he did not believe Mr Sunak. “Is he saying he just wants to look at it, or is he saying he really intends to do something,” he asked.

“He’s saying if it came to it, and the ECHR was the block on the Rwanda scheme, we would ‘consider’ leaving, yes. So, we would ‘consider’ leaving. Not – we will leave. Not – we will give the British people a referendum.”

It’s time to stop dithering and break from Strasbourg court

By Sarah Dines

The Prime Minister’s recent statement that he was determined to “stop the boats”, something which was “more important than membership of a foreign court”, is to be welcomed.

But we must move beyond rhetoric. In 2018 the then home secretary Sajid Javid declared a “major incident” when 250 arrivals crossed the Channel. The figure for last year for “small boat” arrivals was 40,000.

The reality, however, is that Rishi Sunak focused on only one of three political elephants gradually squeezing the life out of the Conservative Members of Parliament they have forced into the corner of the Westminster tea room.

The second elephant is that in addition to growing “illegal” small boat arrivals we are now also faced with a perfect storm of startling levels of unprecedented “legal” immigration into the United Kingdom. The latest figures show that net migration has increased the population by a record 745,000 in the year to December 2022.

More than 1.2 million new people have entered the United Kingdom over the last two years. New estimates from the Office for National Statistics show that migration will add 6.1 million people to the UK population by 2036. The UK population could reach nearly 74 million by that time. Mass migration is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. This is a problem facing countries, governments and politicians across the European Union and beyond.

The third elephant in the tea room is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) itself, as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights. All roads with regard to legal and illegal migration lead back to the Strasbourg court. The United Kingdom has become a laboratory for Strasbourg’s political activists. The cost to the British taxpayer of hundreds of thousands of Strasbourg-sanctioned “legal” migrants will run to many billions of pounds.

This is now an existential issue for the United Kingdom as we know it today and for the Conservative Party, which is in the last chance saloon as far as the British voter is concerned. The European court’s jurisdiction over the United Kingdom is a Gordian knot that must be cut. We will be unable to stop unprecedented “legal” immigration into Britain unless and until we withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. We will be unable to stop the “small boats” unless and until we withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. We will be unable to control and police our borders until we withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court. The time for navel-gazing procrastination is over.

We don’t need to have a long conversation about the United Kingdom’s continuing membership of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. We have already had that. Far from being a court dispensing the sort of justice that the average British citizen would expect and recognise, the European Court of Human Rights should be seen as a questionable run-away court manned by ersatz judges seemingly ideologically wedded to promulgating wholly unacceptable rulings aimed at social engineering and open borders rather than legal judgments. The need to withdraw from the Strasbourg court is clear cut and has been articulated by several prime ministers.

Back in 1995, John Major declared rulings by the ECHR to be “outrageous” and “an indefensible affront to common sense” placing Britain in a “wholly unacceptable” position. He declared himself prepared to consider derogation from the convention. He chose not to. Despite having embedded the convention into British law by way of his disastrous 1998 Human Rights Act, Tony Blair then found himself condemning resultant rulings as “an abuse of common sense”, which he said might need to be corrected by more primary legislation.

‘Not prepared to tolerate’

The Sun reported in 2006 that “[Blair] wants the Government to have the power to overturn judges’ barmy rulings where a criminal’s so-called rights come ahead of their victim’s. The PM says this is one of his ‘most urgent policy tasks’”. Blair declared that “The rules of the game are changing”. They did not. Gordon Brown thundered in 2007 that he was “not prepared to tolerate a situation where we have people breaking the rules in our country when we cannot act”. It turns out he was prepared to after all.

David Cameron made it clear in 2015 that Britain would withdraw from the convention if it did not get the changes it wanted: “We are very clear about what we want, which is British judges making decisions in British courts.”

Theresa May noted in 2016 that “the ECHR can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals — and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights”. Mrs May concluded: “If we want to reform human rights laws in this country . . . we should leave . . . the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court.” She blinked first.

Boris Johnson declared that “all options are on the table”, which is sadly where they stayed. Liz Truss stated that she too was “prepared to withdraw” from the court but didn’t. Rishi Sunak has also addressed the elephant in the room: “The ECHR cannot inhibit our ability to properly control our borders, and we shouldn’t let it.” The jury, as it were, is still out on that. The reality is that British prime ministers and home secretaries have marched the British people up the hill several times only to lead us down again.

By way of mitigation the Conservative party was in coalition with Strasbourg’s uber fans, the Liberal Democrats, from 2010-15, and when free of them in 2015 Britain’s focus shifted to Brexit – itself a response to the open borders at the heart of the European Union’s socio-economic project. While successive governments dithered, the European court has been subject to institutional capture by political activists intent on turning it into a social engineering experiment.

‘Pseudo-legal rulings’

At least 22 of the 100 Strasbourg judges who served between 2009 and 2019 are either former employees or associates of seven non-governmental human rights organisations that are highly active before the court. The European court’s pseudo-legal rulings have resulted in the writing of cheques on the British taxpayers’ account.

Every claim for refugee status or entry into the United Kingdom resulting from Strasbourg’s ever expanding interpretation of Convention “rights”, and rubber- stamped or fast-tracked by a civil service in thrall to the human rights industry, has a cost implication. We all know of the £8 million a day for housing illegal “small boats” migrants, something which is set to cost £6 billion over the next two years.

This is the tip of the fiscal iceberg created in large part by Strasbourg and borne by taxpayers already acutely aware of the associated pressures on the National Health Service, public housing, rental market and schools. The number of asylum seekers in hotels increased by 25-fold between late 2019 and early 2022. Some 93,300 people claimed asylum in the UK in 2023. The cost of housing 120,000 asylum seekers, whose presence and open-ended rights are also facilitated by Strasbourg’s ruling, is on course to reach up to £11 billion a year. The cost to the taxpayer of hundreds of thousands of Strasbourg-sanctioned “legal” migrants runs to many billions of pounds.

Despite being dressed up in legalese by a questionable court, the simple fact is that the mass migration saddled upon the United Kingdom by Strasbourg is economically and socially unsustainable. Putting aside government approved Ukrainian and Hong Kong Chinese schemes, Strasbourg’s elastic rulings are in one form or another significantly responsible directly or indirectly for migration accounting to a city the size of Leeds entering Britain last year.

‘Exported to the entire world’

Georges Ravarani, a Strasbourg judge, has very cogently explained the court’s underlying principle: “The court’s case-law implies that, in practice, the values enshrined in the convention are exported to the entire world and are applicable not only to 800 million people, but to seven billion.”

Brexit was triggered in part because of the British population’s concerns that membership of the European Union made it possible for several hundred million European Union citizens to legally migrate to the United Kingdom. As Judge Ravarani makes clear, should any of the seven billion people he referred to above make it to Britain, legally or illegally, they will be able to claim expanding socio-economic rights not as agreed by British legislators, but as unilaterally granted to them and interpreted by politically activist foreign judges.

Elizabeth I’s speech to the troops at Tilbury in 1588 comes to mind: “Think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.” Britain faces a different armada today; one arriving by air, truck and small boat. Strasbourg’s princelings, aided and abetted by regiments of human rights lawyers and organised international criminal gangs, have been party to facilitating unsustainable mass migration into the United Kingdom.

My advice to the Government is clear. We have got to solve the problem now. A very short, simple piece of emergency legislation can be passed, giving the six months’ notice of withdrawal from the convention as required by article 58. Failing that, place the question of who controls our borders at the heart of the Conservative election manifesto later this year.

Sarah Dines is the Conservative MP for Derbyshire Dales