Keir Starmer and David Lammy have caved in to another far right demand over immigration
The Labour government wants to rip human rights laws in a bid to prove it’s “tough” on immigration.
Justice secretary David Lammy told a summit in France on Wednesday that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) cannot be “frozen in time”.
Lammy said that the convention “must not stop states effectively tackling” immigration. He claimed that the “right to family life” in the ECHR is being “stretched to prevent the removal of people with no right to remain in this country”.
He wants to weaken rights that protects people from torture, saying “the threshold of inhuman and degrading treatment” must be constrained.
But it is already incredibly easy for the British government to deport people, says solicitor Julian Bild.
Julian, who has worked in immigration law for 30 years, told Socialist Worker that “most people providing support will see this as performative cruelty”. “It won’t make it easier because it is already extremely easy to deport.”
It is very exceptional for people facing deportation to succeed in their appeals. And, even if they’re successful in lower courts, the Home Office takes it to the higher courts.
“It is almost impossible to achieve an appeal on human rights grounds in these higher courts,” Julian said.
Julian blasted Keir Starmer and Lammy for suggesting that the ECHR is frozen in time as “nonsensical”. “They were both human rights lawyers,” he said.
“They know the convention is being continually reviewed in the courts. It is a living convention and fits our current circumstances because the judges and courts are always considering them.”
Fighting a deportation on health grounds under Article 3 of the ECHR is extremely hard. As Julian explained, “You have to show that the person is likely to die if they are removed. Article 3 already allows the Home Office to deport people with Aids who can’t get access to healthcare treatment in their home country.”
The same is true of fighting deportations around the right to a family life. “You have to show it is unduly harsh for a deportee to be removed and for their family,” he said. “This threshold of unduly harsh is very high.
“It is a requirement to show that the family here will suffer harm—not just the problems of a family being split up but actual harm.”
Labour is expected to bring forward legislation to change how these articles of the ECHR are interpreted in British courts.
Julian said that Labour’s move was “about showing that the government is tough on immigration without any real honesty about the actual barriers to deportations”. “The reality for the overwhelming majority of those facing deportation is that they are detained and deported,” he said.
“Labour is trying to knock down a strawperson for their own political purposes”.
Labour is adopting the far right’s talking points and policies on immigration in a bid to outflank Nigel Farage’s far right party Reform UK.
Lammy claims that he wants to target “foreign criminals” and “illegal migrants”—but that will only be the start.
Julian said, “We know Reform UK’s policies include removing documented migrants who’ve settled in Britain. The attack on ‘foreign criminals’ and asylums seekers is a Trojan horse. If they change the laws for people who are most vilified in society, then they will come for everyone else.
“The long term plan is shocking—deporting hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been here for most of their lives.”
Anti-racists have to take on the racist lies about migrants—and the far right forces that they fuel.
Racism first developed as a justification for enslavement
