British cabinet ministers are reportedly pressuring the prime minister to abandon a European rights treaty if courts continue to block plans to resettle illegal immigrants in Rwanda.
A conservative daily broadsheet reported on Thursday that around a third of the cabinet want PM Rishi Sunak to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) after the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights intervened to prevent deportation flights.
A British court has likewise since ruled the policy to be unlawful, with the Court of Appeal rejecting the government's objections. The case will now go to the Supreme Court.
The newly-passed Illegal Migration Act already gives the government the authority to ignore ECHR rulings — as well as to deport those arriving illegally to their home country or a third state with no recourse to claim asylum — although that has yet to be tested in court.
But a cabinet source quoted in the report said eight of the 22 cabinet ministers, along with other "senior Tories" would back withdrawing altogether if courts continue to block flights to Rwanda.
“Opinion in the parliamentary party has hardened considerably, as evidenced by the relative ease of passing the Illegal Migration Act. That is reflected in the Cabinet,” the source said. “The question is actually who would care enough to oppose given the situation, and it’s hard to think who that would be.”
Another cabinet minister — reportedly a Sunak ally — told the newspaper that the government was not "ruling it out."
"We’ve spent a very long time as a party trying to find a place that we can live with the ECHR, and we still want to," they said. "But ultimately, if you get to a point between deliverability and not, then I don’t think you can totally rule it out.”
Meanwhile, another 400 people were trafficked to the UK in small boats on Thursday, bringing the total since the crisis began in 2018 to over 100,000. That figure dealt a new blow to Sunak's pledge to "stop the boats."
On Monday, pro-immigration NGO Care4Calais won an injunction against 20 illegal immigrants to be housed on the Bibby Stockholm hotel barge, now moored in Portland harbour in the south-western county of Dorset. The NGO's lawyers claimed the group of single men, who reached the UK across the English Channel on people-trafficking boats, had a "severe fear of water."
Ruling Conservative Party chairman Lee Anderson, the MP for Ashfield, told a daily newspaper that “if they don’t like barges then they should f*** off back to France" or "better not come at all in the first place."