Nigel Farage’s plans for the mass deportation of asylum seekers have been condemned by church leaders, with the country’s most senior bishop saying it was ‘beneath us as a nation’.
Earlier this week, Farage set out his plans for mass deportation of asylum seekers, including pledging to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, scrapping the Human Rights Act, and vowing to deport all illegal immigrants, saying that even women and children would be detained. As part of his policy offer, he also said he would be fine with Britain funding despotic regimes in Iran and Afghanistan, in order to negotiate return agreements to take refugees fleeing their regimes.
The Archbishop of York – who is the Church of England’s most senior figure until a new Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed – told The Mirror: “We cannot simply close the door on people fleeing war, violence and persecution. ‘Send them all back’ is not a sensible or compassionate response, and is beneath us as a nation.
“We need a system that is fair and functional and works well for everyone – including those living near hotels and other asylum accommodation. But this debate also goes to the heart of who we are.
“It is the Christian way to meet those asking for help with compassion and understanding, and it has long been the British way to give shelter where we can to those escaping violence and conflict abroad. It should remain that way.”
The Archbishop of York’s criticisms come after Steven Croft, the Bishop of Oxford, also criticised Farage’s plans, calling the Reform UK leader ‘deeply disturbing’ for seeking to play on the fear of the stranger to ‘stoke division for political advantage’.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
‘Reform’s ‘British Bill of Rights’ puts your freedoms at risk, not just asylum seekers’
This Tuesday, Nigel Farage announced that in order to push through his proposed Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill, a Reform UK government would scrap the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to be replaced by a British Bill of Rights.
Reform UK has claimed that within the span of one parliament, if they came to office, they would deport between 500,000 and 600,000 immigrants currently living in the UK and refuse to grant asylum to anyone arriving by crossing the Channel via small boat. In effect, this would mean that an Afghan woman fleeing Taliban persecution, a child escaping the war in Sudan, or a queer person facing the death penalty upon return to their country of origin would be denied life-saving refuge in the UK under a Farage-led government.
In legal terms, this policy would breach, at least, Articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 13 of the ECHR, which guarantee rights such as life, liberty, security, and freedom from torture, rendering Reform UK’s proposals incompatible with our existing legal framework.
Farage’s desire to scrap the ECHR is a cheap, disingenuous and inhumane answer to the real problems around immigration in this country, and the public see right through it. A recent YouGov poll found that 51% of British adults surveyed believed we should remain a member the ECHR, to just 27% who believed we should withdraw.
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In the dog whistle culture of modern political media, we have come to associate the ECHR almost exclusively with the subject of immigration and asylum, failing to fully comprehend the purpose it serves for all of us. While today’s political conversation, and the 27% against the ECHR, may fail to recognise this, the reason that we co-signed the ECHR in 1950 was to protect against regression to tyranny and oppression, in view of the recent horrors of the Second World War and Nazi Germany.
The ECHR exists to safeguard all of our rights, shielding us from being killed by the state, from torture, slavery, and from punishment without due process. It enshrines our rights to private and family life, our freedom of thought, expression, assembly and marriage, and outlaws discrimination. Leaving this Convention risks the rights of all of those who live in the UK.
As it stands, we know nothing about what Farage’s British Bill of Rights would contain, meaning by clapping along as he sermonises about withdrawing British membership of the ECHR, we are cheering in support of risking our own rights being stripped away with no clarity as to what would replace them. Farage’s unsubstantiated policy plans indicate his desire to win power at any cost, using divisive politics and language to get himself and his friends through the door at Number 10 at all of our peril.
A modern vision for Britain includes honouring our history by continuing to uphold unanimous and inimitable human rights, while recognising the need to adapt to modern problems. As this country’s parties of government debate how we can meaningfully address domestic issues associated with immigration, it is ever clearer that by undermining the rights that underpin our democracy and failing to offer alternatives, Farage’s party poses only risk and no remedy.
Holly Huntrods is a Labour Parliamentary Researcher with a background in feminist theory and international politics.View all articles by Holly Huntrods
Lisa Matthews
Left Foot Forward
Farage's mass deportation policy would rip families apart and directly threaten children and young people's safety
Earlier this week, Nigel Farage unveiled Reform’s “Operation Restoring Justice” – a “five year
emergency programme” if the party gets into office, which includes leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying the Refugee Convention.
They propose to carry out mass deportations of people seeking asylum by making it impossible for people who enter the country irregularly to get asylum, introducing a legal duty to remove anybody who comes irregularly, and to detain any migrants in the UK who don’t have leave to remain.
The plans are a fundamental attack on the right to safety – and we’ve seen them before. Many of the measures in the so-called “emergency programme” echo the Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Act. That piece of legislation similarly attempted to introduce what amounted to an asylum ban, undermining the very principle of protection in the UK. And both hinge on the idea that irregular entry to the UK somehow negates someone’s need for protection, ignoring the fact that there is virtually no way to enter the UK by regular means.
Nobody wants to make a dangerous journey to the UK, but people don’t have any other choice because this government has actually shut down safe routes to the UK rather than introduce any new ones. While governments or political parties talk of stopping the boats or smashing the gangs, they have failed to take the steps that would mean people would not be forced to use smugglers: safe routes.
People fleeing war and persecution do what they have to do to keep themselves and
their families safe, and none of these measures will stop that basic human instinct. It’s what we all would do if faced with the risk of death, torture, or imprisonment for our political, religious or other identities.
At Young Roots, we work with young people who have had to leave everything behind in order to be safe. While Farage has said in later interviews that Reform does not plan to deport women and children, his measures would mean ripping families apart and would directly threaten the majority of the young people we support – young men who are mostly here without their families, alone for the first time in their lives. Young men also need to be safe, and to be able to rebuild their lives and look to the future.
The young people we work with have hopes and dreams like the rest of us. As one young person told us, “What you want is a stable place to feel safe, where I can live without being scared, so I can do the basic things – study, work, live my life without stress and without being scared I will be harmed.
Policies like those proposed earlier this week, and all the anti-immigration rhetoric that goes along with them, make young people feel extremely unsafe when they have already had their childhoods and youth taken away by fear.
We all deserve to feel safe – and we must give no ground to policies that use human beings as political pawns. What would we want for ourselves and our families if we had flee for our lives? Surely the very opposite of the inhuman and cruel plans making the headlines these days: welcome, humanity, community and safety. Let’s be vocal about that instead.
Sections of the right-wing press seem completely relaxed about Farage’s plans to strip away constraints on state power
Yesterday Nigel Farage let loose, exposing his contempt for democratic institutions and legal constraints, as he pushed a hard-line message on refugees, immigration and asylum seekers, normalising rhetoric that previously would’ve been considered beyond the pale.
He described irregular migration as an “invasion” and a “scourge”, referring to men who cross the Channel repeatedly as being of “fighting age”. As the Guardian summed up so succinctly in its editorial yesterday: “This is not a policy contest. It is an attack on democratic norms – the kind that paves the way for repressive rule by and for economic elites, under the guise of national restoration. That’s Donald Trump’s game. It’s Mr Farage’s too.”
The most worrying trend of all, is that sections of the right-wing press seem completely relaxed about Farage’s plans to strip away constraints on state power, and rather than holding him to account over his attack on democratic norms and institutions, they’re more concerned about how his plans will be implemented. In this, they have abdicated their responsibility to hold power to account.
At LFF, we will do all we can to expose Farage for what he really stands for. Here are four worrying takeaways from the Reform UK leader’s speech.
1.Scrapping the Human Rights Act
Farage made clear his intention yesterday to scrap the Human Rights Act, which would remove protections against state power not just for asylum seekers but for each and every single one of us.
As Labour’s Stella Creasy made clear yesterday: “The Human Rights Act protects everyone. Including you. He wrecked your economy with Brexit, don’t let him wreck your freedoms with this.”
The ECHR has helped British citizens by providing legal protection against torture, discrimination, and breaches of rights like freedom of expression and a fair trial.
2. Farage is happy to pay despotic regimes like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iran to secure a migrant deportation deal, despite their appalling human rights record
The Reform UK leader said he wasn’t bothered by people being deported to regimes where they would be at risk of being tortured and killed.
3. Locking up women and children
Farage confirmed that under his plans women and children would be detained and deported in a bid to stop small boat crossings in the Channel. That as a democracy we would be willing to lock up vulnerable children, should alarm all progressives.
4. Threatening peace in Northern Ireland
Farage accepted that pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights would create significant problems with the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of violent sectarian conflict known as The Troubles, and which requires the ECHR to be incorporated into Northern Ireland law.
The party has been warned that its plan to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights risks disturbing the agreement that brought relative peace to Northern Ireland when it was signed in 1998.
Left Foot Forward News
“Is it moral?”
Reform UK’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice has confirmed that his party is open to paying the Taliban to secure a migrant deportation deal, despite their appalling human rights record.
Farage set out plans yesterday to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants in five years if it wins the next election. In order to do so, the Reform UK leader said anybody who arrived illegally would be immediately detained, including women and children, and that he would pull Britain out of the Human Rights Act as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. The Reform UK leader also said that his party was open to doing deals with despotic regimes such as Iran and Afghanistan to agree deportation deals, even if it meant people being sent back to be tortured.
Appearing on Sky News following Farage’s speech, Tice was asked: “You said you would do deals with despotic governments in Afghanistan and Sudan and send them straight back. Is that the moral thing to do?”
Tice replied: “Sometimes, you do business with people you may not get on with, who may not be your friends. That’s life. Leadership is tough.”
Sky’s presenter then asked again: “Is it moral?”
Tice replied: “I’ll tell you what is not moral, that is putting the safety of our women and girls, British citizens, at risk. That is completely immoral.”
Pushed once more on whether a Reform UK government would do a deal with the Taliban, he said: “We will do whatever is necessary to protect the safety and security of British citizens.”
But the presenter told him the Taliban “do far worse to women and girls than anything that happens in this country”.
Tice, having a meltdown replied: “Whose side are we on? Are you on the side of international lawyers and the likes?”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
