Today
Dominic Grieve has said Farage's draconian plans would likely be struck down by the courts
Dominic Grieve has said Farage's draconian plans would likely be struck down by the courts
Even if Nigel Farage “unpicked Britain” from human rights laws, the courts would likely block his attempts at mass deportation, former attorney general Dominic Grieve has said.
The Reform UK leader is set to announce his extreme mass deportation plans in a speech this morning.
It is understood that if Farage is elected prime minister at the next election, he would want to forcibly remove hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers if they don’t accept a £2,500 payment and a free flight to leave the UK.
He has pledged that five deportation flights would leave the UK every day. He has also announced plans to house asylum seekers in detention centres on military bases.
Grieve has told The Independent that Farage’s plans would likely be blocked by the courts, even if he scraps crucial international agreements like the UN Convention on Torture, the Refugee Convention and the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
The former attorney general has pointed out that if the UK leaves the ECHR this would also lead to the collapse of the post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU.
Grieve said there will also be huge political upheaval if Farage pursues these draconian plans, and that people “will mount campaigns of various sorts against it”.
He also told The Independent that the courts are likely to intervene. “You still can’t rule out that a court might – in the case of somebody where it was quite clear they were going to be deported, in circumstances where their lives would be seriously at risk in their home country – intervene to stop deportation under customary law or even the common law,” he said.
He said that the “single biggest problem” is that countries are unlikely to be willing to take back migrants that he wants to deport, especially if there is no bilateral agreement in place.
In addition, there are big question marks around the cost of such plans. In April, former Reform MP Rupert Lowe and the Centre for Migration Control claimed the plans would cost £47.5bn. Reform is now suggesting it would cost £10bn.
Reform has dismissed these criticisms but has yet to set out how the plan would work or how much it would cost. Meanwhile, the Tories have accused Farage of copying ideas from their Deportation Bill.
Nigel Farage dodges questions on returning asylum seekers who could be tortured or killed
Today
It was pointed out to Nigel Farage at his press conference this morning that his draconian mass deportation plan could result in returned asylum seekers being tortured or killed.
Farage has set out a plan to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers if his party gets elected in 2029.
At the press conference, Paul McNamara from Channel 4, said to Farage: “There is a realistic possibility that if you go forward with this, there might be a case where someone arrives in the UK by small boat, you send them back to the country from which they came, and they will be tortured or killed because of a decision you’ve made.”
He asked: “How does that sit with you?”.
Farage failed to answer the question about risks to asylum seekers’ lives, and instead replied: “Well the alternative, of course, is to do nothing”.
“That’s the very clear alternative, we just do nothing,” Farage repeated, adding: “We just allow this problem to magnify and grow.”
Farage then claimed that if people who arrive on small boats aren’t deported, it will lead to civil disorder. He added: “And I don’t want this to happen so we can prevent civil disorder from happening, but that is the direction this country is going in.”
Ironically, Farage has been one of the main right-wing figures encouraging far-right activists to protest outside migrant hotels.
The Reform leader added: “We cannot be responsible for all the sins around the world.”
In his speech today, the Reform leader said his party would rip up international human rights agreements, by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the UN Convention against Torture, and repealing the 1998 Human Rights Act.
The removal of these human rights laws would weaken protections both for UK citizens and asylum seekers.
Asked by the BBC’s Ben Wright whether the possibility of thousands of asylum seekers facing imprisonment, torture or death if they were returned to their home countries “bother[s] him at all”, he claimed it does bother him.
However, he added: “What really bothers me is what is happening to British citizens, what really bothers me and you’ve seen this from the Bell Hotel onwards, is the growing concern with justifiable evidence that women and girls are far less safe on the streets than they were before all this began.”
It has been pointed out that Farage didn’t raise the issue of women’s safety before more people started arriving in the UK on small boats.
In 2015, before small boats started arriving, 103,614 sexual offences were recorded in one year, with almost 35,000 reports of rapes, 68,000 reports of other sexual offences. Yet Farage wasn’t talking about women’s safety back then.
Kolbassia Haoussou, director of survivor leadership at Freedom from Torture, has reacted to Reform saying it would leave the 1951 Refugee Contention and the UN Convention Against Torture.
Haoussou said: “The UN Convention Against Torture is a promise to defend our shared right to live a life free from torture. For centuries, the UK has been a leading voice against torture, helping to shape the very international laws that Reform proposes we destroy.
“These laws were created in the aftermath of the second world war to protect us all. If Britain were to abandon this legacy it would hand repressive regimes around the world a gift and undermine one of humanity’s clearest moral lines. We must not stay silent.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Nigel Farage set to skip Parliament’s return in favour of cosying up to Trump’s allies in Washington DC
Today
Left Foot Forward
Farage has faced criticism from his constituents too for going missing since being elected the MP for Clacton,
Left Foot Forward
Farage has faced criticism from his constituents too for going missing since being elected the MP for Clacton,
So much for putting Britain’s interests first, Nigel Farage can’t even be bothered to turn up to Parliament’s return on September 1, and is instead set to fly off to Washington DC to cosy up to Trump’s allies.
The Mirror reports that Farage has been ‘booked as a star speaker at the National Conservatism conference, run by the Edmund Burke Foundation.’
It goes on to add: “He’ll appear on 2 September alongside a who’s who of Trumpworld – from U.S. director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to the men behind Project 2025, the radical blueprint for a second Trump presidency.”
Farage has faced criticism from his constituents too for going missing since being elected the MP for Clacton, making constant trips to the U.S. to cosy up to Trump and his aides.
He also flew to the U.S. just days after being elected in order to show support to Donald Trump following an assassination attempt on the Republican last year, in an all-expense paid for £32,000 trip.
His constituents have accused him of using the town ‘as a vehicle to further his own interests’, with the MP barely spending any time in his own constituency as he flies off to America and spends time on media shows.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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