PM heads to Council of Europe meeting in Reykjavík, where he also hopes to win backing for Rwanda plan from head of ECHR
Ben Quinn Political correpondent
@BenQuinn75Tue 16 May 2023
Rishi Sunak will plead with other world leaders at a summit on Tuesday for cooperation to tackle illegal migration as he seeks to reassert his authority over the restless right of his party.
He will also seek to use a rare meeting with the president of the European court of human rights (ECHR) to win backing for UK attempts to overcome rules that blocked the first scheduled deportation flight to Rwanda.
The international system for policing human trafficking is not working, Sunak will say in an address in Reykjavík at a meeting of the Council of Europe – a gathering of leaders from the EU, other European states and the ECHR.
Sunak’s renewed push for a Europe-wide approach comes after France previously rejected Britain’s calls for a bilateral returns agreement for migrants crossing the Channel, insisting that there was a need for a wider EU agreement.
However, his most important meeting in Iceland could be his discussions with Síofra O’Leary, the ECHR’s president, over planned changes to how rule 39 works – an order that prevented the inaugural deportation flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda last summer.
He is expected to tell her that reform is needed to create an international system that allows states to protect their borders and help people most in need.
Looming over the talks, government sources have said, is the memory of Sunak caving in last month to demands from hard-right MPs to allow the UK to ignore rulings from the European court of human rights on small boat crossings.
Backbench rebels had been pushing the prime minister to harden the illegal migration bill so ministers could ignore interim rulings. One of the Strasbourg court’s rule 39 injunctions blocked the government’s first attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda last year.
The trip comes as migration tops the political agenda, with the home secretary, Suella Braverman, arguing in a speech at Monday’s National Conservatism conference that Britain “must not lose sight of the importance of controlling legal migration”, as well as preventing people from entering via unauthorised channels.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the Home Office had privately shared figures with No 10 suggesting more than 1.1 million foreign workers and students could arrive in Britain in 2024-25, just as the Tories face a general election test.skip past newsletter promotion
after newsletter promotion
Speaking before the trip, the prime minister said: “Every single point on each route used by people traffickers to smuggle people across our continent represents another community struggling to deal with the human cost of this barbaric enterprise.”
“It is very clear that our current international system is not working, and our communities and the world’s most vulnerable people are paying the price.
“We need to do more to cooperate across borders and across jurisdictions to end illegal migration and stop the boats. I am clear that as an active European nation with a proud history helping those in need, the UK will be at the heart of this.”
source
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, UK
Immigration in general has become a great issue both poltically and socially. The result is that has been toughenning of immigration laws. Let’s not forget that large number of applications are rejected for want of meeting the basic cirtera. And that’s a lot of money for the Embassies processing the application. So, that’s business side of it.
Illegal immigration is a serious problem. People are flee their countries, like from Pakistan from I get daily requests, and they are willing to take greater risk elaswhere than what they are facing at home. No money, no job, not place for residence, just hit the road and literally beg for help.
London for example, no longer a White City. Immigrant and illegal alliens of color have chnaged the face and outlook of the City, fromtaxicab drivers to tourist injdustry and other leading businesses are staffed by mostly immigrants. This is indimidating to the natives, but illiegal immigrants put a huge financial burden on the Government. ,So, naturally some strcit measures become necessary to address the problem.