Leaving ECHR not necessary to prevent small boat crossings, says Cameron

Rishi Sunak has said he would consider jettisoning the convention if it prevented him from implementing Rwanda policy

Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would not be “necessary” to prevent small boat crossings, Lord Cameron has said, despite demands from senior Tories for such a move.
Speaking as the Government’s Rwanda Bill is set to get royal assent, the Foreign Secretary said Rishi Sunak’s deportation policy would work without the UK needing to leave the ECHR.
The Prime Minister had previously hinted that he would be willing to leave the convention if it prevented the implementation of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
But speaking to ITV’s Peston show, Lord Cameron said: “I don’t think it’s necessary to leave the ECHR. I don’t think that needs to happen to make this policy work.”
The Supreme Court ruled last year that the Rwanda scheme was unlawful, finding grounds for believing that migrants sent to Kigali would face a risk of ill-treatment as a result of being returned to their country of origin.
Refoulement – forcing an asylum seeker to return to a nation where they are likely to face persecution – is prohibited by a number of international treaties, including the ECHR, the UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against Torture and the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
These treaties have been given effect in UK domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998, the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004.
Asked whether he would have pursued the Rwanda policy while he was prime minister, Lord Cameron said: “We had a totally different situation because [we] could return people directly to France.
“Now, I’d love that situation to be the case again – that’s the most sensible thing. People land on a beach in Kent, you take them straight back to France, you therefore break the model of the people smugglers. That’s not available at the moment. It’s simply not possible.”
Asked whether this was because of Brexit, he said: “Because of the situation we’re in, because of the attitude of others and all the rest of it.”
Meanwhile, James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, said: “There is a real moral hazard in saying to a nation state government that it cannot manage its own borders, it cannot make decisions about who does or does not live in its own country, because that undermines the integrity of the democratic process in which we live.”
In the past week Liz Truss, the former prime minister, Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister have called for the UK to quit the ECHR.