UK's Asylum System is Broken, How Do We Fix It? #shorts

The list of rebels proposing to tear up the European Convention on Human Rights and rewrite migration rules is becoming more distinguished by the week. We have Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court justice, and David Blunkett, a former home secretary.

READ MORE: https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/leaving-the-echr-wont-fix-the-asylum-crisis-vxmclbhdt

Jack Straw, who introduced the Human Rights Act, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former foreign secretary, have made variations of the same argument: this is legal madness and can’t go on.

It means a special kind of agony for Sir Keir Starmer, who once described international law as his “lodestar”. He came of political age in an era where the Human Rights Act was hardwired into law and seen by some as a kind of semi-divine rulebook that no politician should tear asunder. The 1998 act asks courts to simply “take into account” new Strasbourg rulings. But over the years that nuance was erased and a new principle crept in: our laws should be interpreted with strictness “no less” than that of Strasbourg.

It’s a classic story of mission creep. Remedying this by temporarily or permanently pulling out of the ECHR — in respect of asylum or anything else — has obvious appeal. It’s radical. It can be seen as a re-enactment of Brexit: a story of good people and bad law, taking back control of justice. It would not turn Britain into a legal pariah or make us the new Belarus, as some ludicrously claim. But the main problem is that ditching the ECHR would do almost nothing to solve the asylum crisis.

Read the best of our journalism: https://www.thetimes.com/
Subscribe to The Times and The Sunday Times YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=timesonlinevideo
Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timesandsundaytimes/
Find us on X: https://x.com/thetimes
Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetimes/

#uk #migrantcrisis #frasernelson