New UK Bill Curtailed Illegal Immigrant Rights

The Bill will replace the current Human Rights Act, which currently enshrines the ECHR in British law, and is designed to give British courts greater powers to restrict and limit interventions by European judges in UK affairs without leaving the ECHR.

According to report, migrants who enter the UK illegally by small boats, lorries or planes face curbs on their ability to fight deportation by claiming it breaches their human right to a family life, under a new British Bill of Rights.

Officials and lawyers are examining how the new Bill, due to be unveiled next week by Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, could be used to restrict Article 8 claims to a family or private life under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

They account for some 70 per cent of cases where failed asylum seekers or foreign national offenders challenge their removal or deportation from Britain. They are believed to have represented the majority of the successful objections by 130 migrants against their removal to Rwanda this week.

“It’s about narrowing the circumstances under which people could claim under Article 8 and successfully challenge a deportation,” said a Government source.

It was a last-minute ruling by a lone out-of-hours duty judge from the European court of human rights on Tuesday night that grounded the first deportation flight which had been due to fly seven asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Mr Raab has already signalled that the right of foreign offenders to use the Article 8 right to a family life will be curtailed in the new British Bill of Rights. 

Officials are considering how this could be extended to migrants who enter the UK illegally. The Government’s Nationality and Borders Act, which is due to take effect within weeks, has already increased the penalty for illegal entry from six months to four years.

Under one option, the Bill might ensure that a new category of failed asylum seekers could not use Article 8 to challenge deportation if they met a certain threshold such as length of sentence. 

A second option would set out a “legislative scheme” defining where the Government’s right to deport them in the public interest would outweigh their right to use Article 8 to fight their removal to a third country. 

A third option would prevent a decision to deport a failed asylum seeker being overturned unless it was “obviously flawed,” stopping the courts from substituting their view for that of the Government. 

Mr Raab has already indicated that the new Bill will give ministers powers to ignore last-minute injunctions by European judges – like the one that halted the Rwanda flight. 

He is proposing that because they are “not grounded” in the ECHR but part of the court’s internal rules, they would not have a legally-binding effect under UK law.