Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the UK should be able to "rely" on its own courts to "uphold human rights and the rule of law" amid a mounting backlash at European judges after they intervened to halt the Government's first Rwanda migrants flight.
The European Court of Human Rights last night granted an urgent injunction to one of the asylum seekers to remove him from the flight, just hours after the UK Supreme Court had rejected his plea.
The remaining six migrants facing deportation also secured similar injunctions and the ￡300,000 Boeing 747 charter flight, waiting at RAF Boscombe Down in Wiltshire to take them to Rwanda, was grounded.
Sir Iain, a former leader of the Conservative Party, labelled the situation a "legal farce" and said the European court's decision was "ridiculous".
He told LBC Radio that ministers must now "deal with" the way in which the European Convention on Human Rights applies in the UK and the Government should continue with its plans to introduce a new Bill of Rights.
He said: "If we have our own Bill of Rights then we shouldn’t have to refer constantly back to the court in Strasbourg because we should rely on our courts to be able to uphold human rights and the rule of law which they were doing the other day."
？？Follow the latest updates below.
Maros Sefcovoic, the vice president of the European Commission, said the UK's Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is "extremely damaging to mutual trust and respect between the EU and the UK".
He said the draft legislation has "created deep uncertainty and casts a shadow over our overall cooperation".
Mr Sefcovic said the EU has therefore decided to restart legal action it launched last year and the bloc is also starting fresh infringements proceedings.
He said: ？“We have been withholding this legal action over the last year because we wanted to create a constructive atmosphere to find solutions.
“The UK Government’s decision has left us with no choice but to act. First we are proceeding a step further with an infringement process launched in March 2021, regarding for instance the movement of agri-foods. If the UK doesn’t reply within two months we may take them to the court of justice.
“Second, we are launching two new infringements against the UK. One for failing to carry out the necessary controls at the border control posts in Northern Ireland by ensuring adequate staffing and infrastructure and one for failing to provide the EU with essential trade statistics data to enable the EU to protect its single market.”
Maros Sefcovic, the vice president of the European Commission, said the UK's plans to unilaterally override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol will "break international law".
Speaking in Brussels, he said: "There is no legal, nor political justification whatsoever for unilaterally changing an international agreement."
He added: "Let's call a spade a spade, this is illegal."
Mr Sefcovic confirmed that the EU is restarting legal action against the UK over the implementation of the protocol.
The EU will set out its response to Boris Johnson’s plans to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, with fresh legal action expected against the UK.
Maros Sefcovic, the vice president of the European Commission, is set to resume legal action against the UK that was paused in September last year “in a spirit of constructive cooperation”.
Mr Sefcovic believes Mr Johnson’s unilateral action to effectively tear up elements of the Brexit deal signed by the Prime Minister “goes directly against that spirit”.
As well as resuming that frozen legal process over claims the UK was failing to properly implement the Northern Ireland Protocol, the EU could also begin a further round of infringement proceedings against the Government.
We are expecting Mr Sefcovic to hold a press conference in Brussels just after 10am.
Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, said the EU needs to give ground during talks on the Northern Ireland Protocol as he warned the bloc against restarting legal action against the UK.
He tweeted: "The EU needs to stop repeating its scripts & engage with the real political situation. Resuming court cases against the Government in order to remove the grace periods is obviously nonsensical - if they succeeded it would make the Protocol harder to implement not easier.
"The best way to resolve the situation is of course through negotiations. The UK has been trying this since last summer. If the EU propose something genuinely new today then of course we should look at it, but this seems unlikely given their refusal to change the Protocol."
Maros Sefcovic, the vice president of the European Commission, is expected to set out legal proceedings against the UK for previous breaches of the protocol later this morning.
Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, has warned the Belfast Good Friday Agreement is on "life support" because of the impact of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
He said the "situation on the ground has deteriorated a lot" since last year as he called for the Government's new Northern Ireland Protocol Bill to be "passed quickly" into law.
He tweeted: "The Belfast Good Friday Agreement is on life support. The Protocol that was supposed to support it is actually undermining it. In these circumstances the UK Government @trussliz not only has the right but a duty to act.
"The proposed Bill on the NI Protocol is very far-reaching. It goes well beyond the kind of measures I was considering last autumn. But then the situation on the ground has deteriorated a lot since then - so the best thing is to get behind the Bill and get it passed quickly."
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said it was a “grave thing” to suggest that the European Court of Human Rights should not examine UK policy.
He told BBC Breakfast: “It protects all of our rights, our rights to privacy, our rights at work, our rights if we’re in rented accommodation with landlords, all sorts of things that affect all of our lives.
“And it’s a very grave thing to suggest that those courts should not look at this scheme properly.”
Therese Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said she is "highly confident" that future migrant flights to Rwanda will be able to go ahead.
She told Sky News: “I am highly confident. This decision was taken at rapid pace yesterday. As a consequence it is right that the Government continues to try and make sure we deter unsafe, illegal routes of trying to enter the country because the only people who benefit are unscrupulous people traffickers, often trying to put people into modern slavery as well.”
The Government is under growing pressure from Tory MPs to take action on the European Convention on Human Rights, with some backbenchers calling for the UK to withdraw.
Jonathan Gullis, the Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, posted on his Facebook page: “This policy was always going to face mass action from lefty lawyers and activists. It is clear that the ECHR prevented the flight from departing, after efforts in U.K. courts were exhausted. The ECHR’s role in U.K. law needs looking at urgently!”
Patrick Maguire, Red Box Editor at The Times, tweeted examples of messages posted by MPs on Tory WhatsApp groups.
One said that “ultimately we do need to leave ECHR or renegotiate” and another said “it is time to leave ECHR”.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said the Government’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda is “unworkable” and “unethical”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “Well, Labour has said that this is, in effect, an unworkable scheme. It’s unethical and it’s going to cost a lot of money. Deal with the asylum backlog, we said.”
He added: “Well, it means investing in staff, it means investing in processes, it means it’s unacceptable for the sixth richest economy in the world to have a system where you claim asylum and you wait up to five years.”
Guy Opperman, the pensions minister, said he would not support the UK withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Asked if he would be happy to have a debate about the issue, he told Times Radio: “No, I don't believe it is our policy, nor would it be something I would be advocating, our withdrawing from the ECHR. I think the situation is this, as I understand it, the UK courts have primacy on this matter, but as I understand the decision last night from the ECHR, a decision was made that not everything had been considered by the UK courts in those circumstances.
“Although I fully accept why you are asking me questions. This is not necessarily a final prevention that has taken place last night. This is a temporary delay whilst matters are considered in more detail by the UK courts.”
A Cabinet minister has defended the Government spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on last night’s cancelled Rwanda flight.
Therese Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, insisted that the policy does still represent “value for money”.
She told Sky News: “I do maintain it is value for money and anything we can do to deter people being put in the hands of people smugglers is efforts that are well-deserved in terms of making sure that we try and stop that and get people towards safe, legal routes.”
Therese Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said she had “never known such a quick decision” to be made by the European Court of Human Rights.
She told Sky News: “The Government expected a lot of legal challenges and we went through the British courts who gave the go ahead for this flight to happen, despite the challenges that happen.
“Frankly the Government is disappointed in the decision. I have never known such a quick decision made by somebody at the ECHR on trying to intervene.
“I think the public will be surprised we have European judges overruling British judges but nevertheless I know the Home Office is already getting ready for the next flight.”
Yvette Cooper, Labour's shadow home secretary, said the Government is to blame for the chaos surrounding its Rwanda policy.
She said: "There is no point in the Government blaming anyone else but themselves. They have pushed ahead with a policy they knew was unworkable, unethical, and incredibly expensive because they just wanted a row and someone else to blame.
"They ignored all the warnings about the treatment of torture victims, the lack of proper processes in Rwanda, the fact that it will not stop criminal gangs, and the risk that it will make people trafficking worse. And they have still gone ahead with paying Rwanda over ￡120m.
"They are more interested in picking fights than in pursuing serious policies. This Government has abandoned all British decency and common sense."
Boris Johnson was asked yesterday whether the UK would have to leave the European Convention on Human Rights to avoid the kind of legal battle the Government has faced over Rwanda
He said changes to the law "may very well be" necessary but he did not comment specifically on the ECHR.
Therese Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, today poured cold water on the idea that the UK could withdraw from the ECHR.
Asked if the Government would countenance withdrawing from the convention, she told Sky News: “Well, I think that we have never put that, as far as I am aware, in our manifesto, certainly the 2019 manifesto.
“But I think it is just a, as we have done before, where we have gone into the court with the ECHR, a number of issues, and judgements have been made in favour of the Government, we are a law-abiding Government and I am absolutely sure that frankly we will get to any future discussions about that.
“But right now I am not aware of any decisions or hints even about that. The most important thing is that we tackle this issue right now, we will go back, I am sure, to the ECHR to challenge this initial ruling and because, as I say, British judges have made the decision, said that these flights could go ahead and I still think that is the best thing that can happen.”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the Government needs to "deal with" the European Convention on Human Rights (see the post below at 08.14).
Asked if that means the UK withdrawing from the convention, the former Tory leader told LBC Radio: "The key thing is to whether or not the ECHR at the end of it all should have the final right in Strasbourg to overrule a supreme court here in the UK. After all, in America the Supreme Court in the United States judges all those sorts of cases and makes those decisions and both the High Court, the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court ruled that this was lawful for the Government to go ahead.
"If eventually the ECHR rules that this is lawful then we will have got ourselves into a mess for no reason. The truth is this was always a voluntary affair, the ECHR, and many countries sign up to some but not all of the requirements in the ECHR, that is allowed.
"So the Government needs to look at this very carefully and decide what we are goinbg to do about it."
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, said the intervention by European human rights judges to halt the Government's first Rwanda flight was "ridiculous".
He told LBC Radio: “This has turned into a legal farce really because all our courts have agreed that the Government may go ahead with this, including the Supreme Court, to be overruled by a court that had no representations made to it and just intervened on the back of stuff it had read, as it were.
“So it is a ridiculous point. The Government has got to deal with the convention anyway. If we have our own Bill of Rights then we shouldn’t have to refer constantly back to the court in Strasbourg because we should rely on our courts to be able to uphold human rights and the rule of law which they were doing the other day. So the Government should proceed, continue to go on with this…”
Good morning and welcome to today's politics live blog.
The main issue in Westminster this morning is last night's decision by European judges to intervene to halt the Government's first flight to Rwanda (you can read the overnight story here).
It promises to be a busy day with PMQs at noon and we are also expecting Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to deliver a statement in the Commons this afternoon.
I will guide you through the key developments.
Need help?
Visit our adblocking instructions page.