Former home secretary Suella Braverman has attacked the prime minister’s approach to dealing with the deadlock facing the government’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Ms Braverman urged Rishi Sunak to exclude “all avenues” of legal challenge available to asylum seekers, including the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights in amendments to the Illegal Migration Act.
“The Bill must exclude all avenues of legal challenge. The entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the Refugee Convention, must be disapplied by way of clear “notwithstanding” clauses,” she said.
But Damian Green, the former deputy prime minister, said Ms Braverman’s proposal was the most “unconservative statement” he had “ever heard” from a Conservative politician and compared her plans to the behaviour of Vladimir Putin.
“The second test is the most unconservative statement I have ever heard from a Conservative politician. Giving the state explicit power to override every legal constraint is what Putin and Xi do. We absolutely cannot go there,” Mr Green said on X, formerly Twitter.
