Tag: Human Rights Act

Rwanda Treaty: Cleverly briefs Parliament

Home Secretary James Cleverly addressed Parliament on the Rwanda Treaty and the new Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill yesterday:

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the government’s plans to stop the boats and tackle the vile trade in people smuggling across the Channel.

Three weeks ago, the Supreme Court handed down their judgment on this government’s Migration and Economic Development Agreement with Rwanda.

In that judgment, their Lordships upheld the view of the High Court and the Court of Appeal that it is lawful to relocate illegal migrants, who have no right to be here, to another safe country for asylum processing and resettlement.

But the Court upheld the judgment of the Court of Appeal, meaning that the government cannot yet lawfully remove people to Rwanda. This was due to the Court’s concerns that relocated individuals might be “refouled” – i.e. removed to a country where they could face persecution or ill-treatment. We did not agree with that assessment, but of course we respect the judgement of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court also acknowledged that their concerns were not immutable, were not an aspersion on Rwanda’s intentions, and that changes may be delivered in the future which could address their concerns.

Today I can inform the House that those concerns have been conclusively answered and those changes made, as a result of intensive diplomacy by the Prime Minister, by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, by the Attorney General’s Office and of course by the Home Office. 

We have created a situation which addresses these concerns.

Our Rule of Law Partnership with Rwanda sets out in a legally binding international treaty the obligations on both the UK and Rwanda within international law, and sets out to this House and to the Courts why Rwanda is and will remain conclusively a safe country for the purposes of asylum and resettlement.

This is a partnership to which we and Rwanda are both completely committed. Rwanda is a safe and prosperous country and it is a vital partner for the UK. Our treaty puts beyond legal doubt the safety of Rwanda and ends the endless merry-go-round of legal challenges that have frustrated thus far this policy and second-guessed the will of Parliament.

I want to put on record my gratitude to President Kagame, Foreign Minister Biruta, and the Rwandan government for working with us at pace to do what to takes to get this deal up and running, with flights taking off as soon as possible.

Rwanda will introduce a strengthened end-to-end asylum system, which will include a new, specialist asylum appeals tribunal to consider individual appeals against any refused claims.

It will have one Rwandan and one other Commonwealth co-president and be made up of judges from a mix of nations, selected by those co-presidents.

We have been working with Rwanda to build capacity and to make clear that those relocated to Rwanda will not be sent to another third country.

The treaty is binding in international law. It also enhances the role of the independent Monitoring Committee, which will ensure adherence to obligations under the treaty and have the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring.

It will be given unfettered access to complete assessments and reports and monitor the entire relocation process, including initial screening, to relocation and settlement in Rwanda.

And it will develop a system to enable relocated individuals and legal representatives to lodge confidential complaints directly with the Committee.

But given the Supreme Court’s judgment, we cannot be confident that courts will respect a new treaty on its own. So today the government has published emergency legislation to make unambiguously clear that Rwanda is a safe country and to prevent the courts from second guessing Parliament’s will. 

We will introduce legislation tomorrow, in the form of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, to give effect to the judgement of Parliament that Rwanda is a safe country, notwithstanding UK law or any interpretation of international law.

For the purposes of the bill, a safe country is defined as one to which people may be removed from the UK in compliance with all of the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law that are relevant to the treatment in that country of people who are removed there.

It means that:

  • someone removed to that country will not be removed or sent to another country in contravention of any international law; and
  • anyone who is seeking asylum or who has had asylum determination will have their claim determined and be treated in accordance with that country’s obligations under international law.

Anyone removed to Rwanda under the provisions of the treaty will not be removed from Rwanda except to the United Kingdom in a very small number of limited and extreme circumstances.

And should the UK request the return of any relocated person, Rwanda will make them available.

Decision-makers – which both the Home Secretary and immigration officers and the courts – must all treat Rwanda as a safe country.

And they must do so notwithstanding all relevant UK law or any interpretation of international law, including:

  • the Human Rights Convention; 
  • the Refugee Convention;
  • the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights of 1966;
  • the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984;
  • the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings done at Warsaw on 16 May 2005;
  • customary international law; and
  • any other international law, or convention or rule of international law, whatsoever, including any order, judgment, decision, or measure of the European Court of Human Rights.

Where the European Court of Human Rights indicates an interim measure relating to the intended removal of someone to Rwanda under, or purportedly under, a provision of the Immigration Acts…

…a Minister of the Crown alone – and not a court or tribunal – will decide whether the United Kingdom will comply with those interim measures.

And to further prevent individual claims to prevent removal, the bill disapplies the relevant provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998, including sections 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

It is a bill which is lawful, it is fair, and it is necessary. 

Because people will only stop coming here illegally when they know that they cannot stay, and they will be detained and quickly removed to a safe third country.

Because Mr Deputy Speaker, it is only by breaking the cycle and delivering a deterrent that we will remove the incentive to come and stop the boats.

This legislation builds on the Illegal Migration Act that this House passed this summer and complements the basket of other measures that the UK government is employing to end illegal immigration.

The largest ever small boats deal with France, for example, tackling the supply of boats and parts, the arrest and conviction of people-smugglers, and illegal working raids have all helped to drive down small boat arrivals. Drive them down by more than a third this year even as numbers are rising elsewhere in Europe.

Parliament and the public alike support the Rwanda plan. Other countries have since copied our plans with Rwanda. And we know from interviews that the prospect of being relocated out of the UK has already had a deterrent effect. This will be considerably magnified when we get flights off to Rwanda.

The treaty and new bill will make that a reality.  

I commend this statement to the House.

IMMIGRATION minister Robert Jenrick has resigned over Rwanda legislation.

Do not put our human rights at risk!

The STUC is standing alongside 125 civil society organisations across Scotland to support the Human Rights Act and oppose the #RightsRemovalBill:

JOINT STATEMENT ON THE UK RIGHTS REMOVAL BILL

Our human rights are about the values we hold dear and the way we treat one another – they are about dignity, fairness, equality, tolerance, and respect. They are the foundations that help us live together freely and fairly – a safety net to protect us all.

We are therefore alarmed that the UK Government has introduced a Bill to Parliament which, if enacted, will repeal the Human Rights Act and will significantly
diminish protection for human rights in law.

Our experience of working with individuals and communities across Scotland is that the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) is an essential protection for our human rights. Indeed, many of our organisations submitted evidence to the Independent Review of the Human Rights Act detailing the ways in which the HRA is working well. We also collectively gave many hours of our time to respond to the UK Government’s consultation on proposals for this Bill of Rights. However, both the Panel’s
recommendations and the consultation responses have been disregarded by the UK Government in the development of this Bill.

We are very concerned that there are many elements to this Bill that will significantly reduce human rights protection. These include, for example, restricting / narrowing our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights, lowering standards of protection, and making it harder for the court to protect us from serious and irreparable harm.

The rights removal bill will undermine all of our human rights and significantly impact the realisation of rights for individuals whose human rights are currently most at risk. The UK Government’s proposals for reform are out of step with political and public opinion in Scotland. There is overwhelming support across Scotland to go forwards and not backwards on human rights, for a strong human rights legal
framework and not one that is watered down.

We therefore strongly urge the UK Government to reconsider this Bill and instead, consider what can be done to better protect human rights for all in Scotland, and across the UK.

This statement is supported by 125 organisations:

final-joint-statement-rights-removal-bill-june-2022_signed_01-07-2022Download

Letters: Plans to dismantle Human Rights Act are ‘abhorrent’

Dear Editor

Plans to dismantle the Human Rights Act and create legal hurdles for ordinary people who seek to hold public bodies to account are abhorrent.

The bereaved parents of soldiers who died in ‘Snatch’ Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan sued the Ministry of Defence under the Human Rights Act. Their children were sent to war in lightly armoured vehicles which were known not to offer enough protection against roadside bombs.

The Government suggests that cases brought under the Human Rights Act are often trivial and without merit.

What happened to those families was not trivial and their cases were found to be valid. If they had not fought for justice, the MoD’s failings would simply have been allowed to happen without any accountability.

Human rights claims play an essential role in keeping organisations in check and ensuring justice where those human rights are breached. We should all be alarmed by the Government’s approach.  

Neil McKinley

President, Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)

The UK Jewish community says: “Hands off our Human Rights Act!”

In response to the government’s review of the Human Rights Act, René Cassin, the Jewish voice for human rights, has brought together cross communal Jewish support for its call to protect the Act.

Twelve rabbis and 29 communal organisations and individuals have signed up to support René Cassin’s submission of 8 March 2022 to the Ministry of Justice consultation on Human Rights Act reform. The signatories are very concerned that the plans, put forward by Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab, in December 2021, will reduce human rights and also access to those rights.

The Human Rights Act helps ordinary people in their everyday lives.

In relation to the right to freedom of religion, it has allowed people of faith to wear religious symbols to work and Muslims and Jews to bury their dead in line with their religious beliefs.

Other examples of those helped by the Act are an elderly couple able to stay together in the same care home and women seeking protection when fleeing domestic violence.

The law on same sex marriage came via the Human Rights Act as did the change in the police code that allows 17 year olds to be treated as children if they are arrested but not charged.

The Jewish community voices particular concern that the government proposals weaken human rights for minorities such as asylum seekers, offenders or foreigners.

Mia Hasenson-Gross, Executive Director of Rene Cassin, said: “Through our experience of the Holocaust, we know where targeting minorities can lead. We reject the framing of the Human Rights Act review, which pits undeserving people against the majority.

“As a minority community ourselves, the Jewish community stands with other minority groups, such as Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, asylum seekers and refugees, victims of modern slavery and disabled people in demanding equal human rights.

“Reducing the rights of minorities and vulnerable people reduces the rights of everyone.”

150 groups challenge the PM to secure our Human Rights Act

Yesterday, on global Human Rights Day, as the UK attends the international Summit for Democracy and the Justice Secretary vows to “overhaul” our protections, over 150 groups across the UK challenged the Prime Minister to secure our Human Rights Act.

As the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, attended President Biden’s Summit for Democracy, over 150 groups issued an open letter challenging him to secure our Human Rights Act and safeguard human rights and democratic accountability here at home.

The organisations include those working with children, carers, people with learning disabilities and mental ill-health, women experiencing violence, migrants, older people, and groups campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights, fair trials, access to justice, decent housing and against racial discrimination and to increase the UK’s democratic accountability.

In our work up and down the country, we see the everyday ways our Human Rights Act helps people across the UK to live more dignified and equal lives; ordinary people whose voices are rarely considered by those in power.

The loud calls to tamper with our Human Rights Act, often by those in government with the responsibility to uphold our protections, does little to reassure civil society groups, and the many people we each support and represent.

As parliamentarians quizzed the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab on the government’s human rights priorities, the Minister doubled down on his intention to publish plans to change our law imminently, despite not yet having published the report of the Independent Review of the Human Rights Act.

This atmosphere of hostility towards human rights and legal accountability in the UK cannot continue. The organisations are calling on the Prime Minister, and leaders of all political parties to “move from the romanticisation of being human rights pioneers in 1948 and commit to our Human Rights Act protections being a part of everyone’s life, every day, today and tomorrow.”

Sanchita Hosali, Director of the British Institute of Human Rights, the organisation coordinating the letter, said: “As the UK enthusiastically participates in President Biden’s Summit for Democracy, it is time for our Prime Minister to also turn the lens inwards. The hostile environment towards human rights and accountability cannot continue; if we are a nation that values democracy, we must also value the checks on power.”

“At BIHR whether we are working with doctors and nurses, children and parents, teachers or prison officers, women surviving abuse, people with learning disabilities and many others; what we see every single day is the real value and meaning of our Human Rights Act for people across the UK.”

“Rather than hyperbole and rhetoric bordering on dog whistle politicking, we need a government that is willing to stand up for Our Human Rights Act, our way to hold them to account. As we all work hard to mitigate the impact of the pandemic – a crisis in which our Human Rights Act has provided vital protections – we stand with over 150 other organisations calling for a world in which our political leaders move from the romanticisation of being human rights pioneers in 1948 and commit to our rights being a part of everyone’s life, every day, today and tomorrow. It is a challenge we urge Mr Johnson to take on.”

The letter reads:

“Dear Prime Minister and Political Leaders

Every year on 10 December, the world marks Human Rights Day, commemorating the day when, in 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognising the dignity and equal rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

This is the foundation of our Human Rights Act; this is why it matters. Our law here at home, setting out each person’s protections, and the responsibilities of government and those with public power to realise that vision of the UDHR; for us all to live in equal dignity.

Our politicians often proudly recall the UK’s role in setting down human rights law in the aftermath of World War II, standing shoulder to shoulder with nations to affirm our commitment to ensuring that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, that a common understanding of these rights should be shared by every person and part of society.

Now, in the midst of this modern era global crisis, human rights must inform both our responses to the pandemic and our recovery from it. No one has escaped the impact of this virus. And sadly, we have witnessed the disproportionate and discriminatory effects of Covid-19 and government measures among too many, including among black and minoritized communities, for disabled people, and people who live in care homes, alongside significant educational impacts for children and young people, deepening poverty, increased reporting of domestic abuse, and even more difficulty accessing justice.

There is much more than we cannot do justice to in such a short space, but which has been documented by parliamentary committee inquiries and research from our national human rights institutions, academics and across civil society. If recovery is to be resilient and just it must be focused on upholding our human rights.

And yet, here in the UK, rather than renewed commitment to upholding rights we face a hostile environment for human rights. Rather than addressing the inequalities fuelled and exacerbated by the pandemic, we are facing a political climate filled with threats to “overhaul” the very protections we all need upheld. The loud calls to tamper with our Human Rights Act, by those with the very responsibility to uphold them, does little to reassure us, and the many people we support and represent.

Human Rights Day should be an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in rebuilding the world we want. We call on the UK Government, and all political leaders, to share our commitment to universal human rights, as set out in our Human Rights Act.

As civil society groups working hard to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, we want a world in which our political leaders move from the romanticisation of being human rights pioneers in 1948 and commit to our Human Rights Act protections being a part of everyone’s life, every day, today and tomorrow.”