Priti Patel has alleged that European human rights judges who refused to let a migrant flight to Rwanda are ‘anti-Tory’ and ‘anti-Brexit.’
The Home Secretary, whose parents were Ugandan Indian immigrants to the UK, slammed the’scandalous’ action and promised to overturn it, while also stating her wish to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Despite the UK Supreme Court’s original green light, the inaugural deportation flight to east Africa was cancelled minutes before it was scheduled to take off on Tuesday due to an 11th-hour intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Patel intended to send illegal migrants on a one-way aircraft to Rwanda in order to prevent others from risking their lives across the Channel.
She further claimed that the ECHR’s intervention was politically motivated and a result of the United Kingdom’s decision to quit the EU.
‘How and why did they make that decision? Was it politically motivated? I’m of the view that it is, absolutely,’ she told The Telegraph.
‘The opaque way this court has operated is absolutely scandalous. That needs to be questioned.
‘We don’t know who the judges are, we don’t know who the panel are, we haven’t actually had a judgment – just a press release and a letter saying we can’t move this person under rule 39.
‘They’ve not used this ruling previously, which does make you question the motivation and the lack of transparency.’
In judgements in the UK, the ECHR has applied rule 39, which refers to urgent “interim measures.”
Patel claimed that the ECHR’s judgment was anti-Tory because she received hateful messages calling her a “racist b****” because of the proposal.
‘This is all about delaying planes and keeping people who have come here via these risky methods in our country rather than allowing the government to do its job,’ she said.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was established after WWII by parliamentarians including Sir Winston Churchill and is not affiliated with the EU.
Boris Johnson acknowledged in his 2019 Brexit plan that Britain’s commitment to the ECHR was necessary for the kind of collaboration he intended with the European Union.
‘I’m not an advocate of European institutions,’ Patel remarked after the ECHR prevented Britain from transporting unlawful migrants on a one-way flight to Rwanda.
Brexit could jeopardize Britain’s relationship with the EU, especially because the government has threatened to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol, which was put in place to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
It would not only violate Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan, but it would also violate the rules of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland.
Some ministers are urging the UK to disregard the ECHR judgement, claiming that it can easily be overturned. The UK had previously disregarded ECHR judgements on prisoner voting.
‘Unlike the European Court of Justice, the ECHR judgements have no direct effect and may simply be overcome,’ one Cabinet minister told MailOnline.
‘We should not enable a weirdly constituted international court to trump the democratic process when our own courts have found something to be legal.’ Parliamentary sovereignty should be asserted.’
Almost half of the court’s rulings from the last decade have yet to be implemented by member states, according to the European Implementation Network, which monitors the court’s efficacy.
The United Kingdom is one of the best performers, complying with 80% of verdicts, compared to 72% for France, 63% for Germany, and only 39% for Spain.
In the last decade, Russia has implemented only 10% of the court’s decisions, while Azerbaijan has implemented only 3%.
