European human rights court could halt UK deportations to Rwanda

The European Court of Human Rights issued a last-minute injunction on behalf of an Iraqi migrant on Tuesday night that could scupper UK government plans to go ahead with the first flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Clare Moseley from the charity Care4Calais said six other asylum seekers, who were also facing deportation from a military base, had now applied to the ECHR. They were hoping, with only an hour to go on Tuesday night, that the court would also intervene on their behalf.

The court, which rules on possible violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, said in its ruling on behalf of the Iraqi that: “In the interests of the parties and the proper conduct of the proceedings before it . . . the applicant should not be removed until the expiry of a period of three weeks following the delivery of the final domestic decision in the ongoing judicial review proceedings.”

The ECHR’s intervention sets up a possible clash with prime minister Boris Johnson who suggested in an interview earlier in the day that the UK might withdraw from the ECHR to prevent lawyers thwarting the government’s agreement with Rwanda.

The prime minister spoke as a flurry of last-ditch attempts by individual asylum seekers, and a coalition of NGOs and the union representing many border staff, failed to persuade UK courts to ground the first scheduled flight.

Asked before the ECHR had intervened whether, given the number of legal challenges to the policy it was time for the UK to leave the convention, Johnson said: “Will it be necessary to change some laws to help us as we go along? It may very well be. And all these options are under constant review.”

In response, Liberty, the human rights group. tweeted that “leaving the ECHR would represent the biggest attack on human rights in this country in a generation”.

“It would irreversibly damage the UK’s international reputation,” the group said.

Johnson also provoked a furious response from the legal profession on Tuesday after suggesting that lawyers representing asylum seekers facing deportation were “abetting criminal gangs”.

“It is misleading and dangerous for the prime minister to suggest lawyers who bring such legal challenges are doing anything other than their job and upholding the law,” the Bar Council and Law Society of England and Wales said in a statement.

“Anyone at risk of a life-changing order has a right to challenge its legality with the assistance of a lawyer, who has a duty to advise their client on their rights,” it read.

The government’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, designed to deter people smugglers from trafficking migrants across the Channel, have polarised opinion, with the archbishops of Canterbury and York, together with 23 bishops, joining the outcry and describing the policy on Tuesday as “immoral” in a letter to the Times.

Some 39 of about 130 people who have been detained crossing the Channel into the UK since May were originally scheduled for removal to Rwanda on Tuesday evening.

But although the Court of Appeal declined to grant an urgent injunction to block the flight, and the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear the case, individual legal challenges on human rights and health grounds had whittled the number of deportees down to seven.

On Tuesday, Mr Justice Jonathan Swift turned down last-minute appeals at the high court on human rights and health grounds from four of the remaining asylum seekers set to be removed.

From the Rwandan capital Kigali, the government sought to reassure the first deportees that they would be welcomed on arrival, “supported to make new lives” and provided with legal and translation services.

“We will provide decent accommodation and look after all their essential needs,” Yolande Makolo, a government spokeswoman said.

Earlier in the day, Johnson won cheers from his cabinet when he defended the deal with President Paul Kagame’s government, which has agreed to process asylum claims and provide residence to successful applicants in return for an initial payment of £120mn from the UK.

“We are not going to be deterred or abashed by some of the criticism directed at this policy some of it from slightly unexpected quarters. We are going to get on and deliver,” he said in a veiled reference to the dispute that has appeared to put his Conservative government at odds with much of the establishment and the heir to the throne.

The initiative is proving popular on the right of the Tory party where it has been applauded as a means of establishing control over Britain’s sea borders. Around 10,000 people have entered the country via the Channel this year.

But the UN refugee agency has said that it breaches Britain’s obligations under both domestic and international law, while a coalition of NGOs and the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents border staff, has been granted a full judicial review in July.

The review will probe the risks posed to asylum seekers being sent to Rwanda, which has its own long record of human rights abuses.