Europe’s top human rights body has urged British parliamentarians to prevent the passing of legislation designed to curb cross-Channel migration, describing it as “incompatible with the UK’s international obligations”.
In a letter published on Monday, Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said it was “essential” that MPs and peers reject the illegal migration bill because it created “clear and direct tension with well-established and fundamental human rights standards”.
The letter, addressed to MPs, peers, the Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Speaker of the House of Lords, marked the second warning about the legislation from an international body in recent days.
On Friday, the UK representative of the UN refugee agency said the bill, by in effect barring many people from seeking asylum in Britain, breached the country’s obligations under the UN refugee convention.
Mijatović’s letter came ahead of two days of debate in the Commons on the contentious legislation, which aims to reduce the number of people arriving in Britain across the Channel.
If passed, it would block people considered to have entered the UK illegally from claiming asylum and impose a “legal duty” on the home secretary to remove asylum seekers to a “safe” third country or to their country of origin.
But in her letter, Mijatović said the legislation would add to the “already significant regression” of protections for refugees’ rights in the UK, and “have serious consequences . . . for the upholding of the UK’s international obligations more generally”.
“In my view, the bill’s provisions create clear and direct tension with well-established and fundamental human rights standards, including under the ECHR,” she said, adding that it would add to the “already significant regression” of human rights protections in the UK.
The Council of Europe oversees the application of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK and 45 other countries belong.
Some on the right of the Conservative party favour withdrawing altogether from the convention or legislating so that domestic courts can disregard rulings from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Home secretary Suella Braverman admitted when the legislation was published that there was a “more than 50 per cent” chance that it would breach the UK’s commitments under the convention.
Mijatović also expressed “serious doubts” that the right to challenge removal to a “safe” third country would give “adequate consideration of the risk of exposure to serious human rights violations”, and questioned the bill’s removal of the rights of asylum seekers to claim protections from modern slavery.
Downing Street on Monday insisted the bill would honour Britain’s international legal obligations, saying: “It has been designed to do just that while being tough and robust.”
Ministers are expected on Monday to agree plans to toughen the legislation, in a push to avert a potential rebellion by some Tory backbenchers angry about what they regard as potential loopholes.
