European Court of Human Rights – Croydon Constitutionalists

European Court of Human Rights – Your views, Part 4

The European Court of Human Rights intervened to stop the deportation flight of asylum seekers to Rwanda. The UK is a member of the Council of Europe and a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights.

We asked your views on: How should the government react to the ruling by the ECHR?

Back to Part 3

Helen Spiby-Vann of the Christian Peoples Alliance party.

“Whether it’s a refugee’s welcome group, Justin Welby or the Prince of Wales, that ‘someone’ in ‘someone should do something’ is you. If you really cared, you would offer of yourself”

The intervention of the ECHR was based on previous Rwandan breaches of human rights. The government needs to improve the process so ‘refugees to Rwanda’ detainees are protected. Subsequently, this criticism should no longer be an obstacle to the scheme.

The UK government should take a steer from all stakeholders, especially the British people.

None of the critics of this scheme have offered suggestions for improvements or an alternative. It begs the question, how serious are they on brokering a solution to make refugee asylum applications fair for all?

I understand the principal behind ‘refugees to Rwanda’ is to put their asylum applications on an equal footing with other refugees who are applying from overseas, and even France. But the government should also be elevating the chances of overseas applicants to those of UK applicants.

I can see the current poor application process incentivises dissent with people who are already over here, having an appeal advantage which encourages people-trafficking. The fact that the lawyers grounding the flight were representing refugees already here, is a case in point.

Other nuances to the ‘refugees to Rwanda’ debate are as follows:

In my opinion, it’s good that the discussion centres around allocation of resources and logistics rather than whether or not we should offer sanctuary.
The people of the UK are in support of offering asylum to refugees.
The debate is over the process not the principal. This is because of our Judeo-Christian legacy.
The Good Samaritan put his hands into his pocket and rescued a victim of crime who was facing death. The victim happened to be a stranger from a hostile people group.
He paid for him to be looked after till he was back on his own two feet. So far as we read in the story, it is implied that the victim of crime accepted the help he was offered and was grateful that he was safe and healthy.
There’s an element of personal responsibility implied for both the Good Samaritan and the victim of crime.
In the Bible parable the initiative to help comes from the heart of the good Samaritan.

While I think it’s appropriate and right that the British people allocate resources from taxes to help refugees coming to Britain, I also think people should be left with capacity to lavish their financial resources (money or time) on the worthy causes God has put on their own hearts. Do the critics want us to pay more taxes so more money can be spent on supporting one state sanctioned worthy cause?

Whether it’s a refugee’s welcome group, Justin Welby or the Prince of Wales, that ‘someone’ in ‘someone should do something’ is you. If you really cared, you would offer of yourself. Go live in a shack and turn your capital into sponsorship, medical and legal aid to help failed asylum seekers. Don’t be like a whitewashed tomb. Practice what you preach.

In the past, my family made a personal sacrifice by offering accommodation to a refugee from Syria (via Lebanon). This dear person was not given appropriate help upon arrival to combat alcoholism (which no one appeared aware of) and sadly without this help upon arrival, their chances of successful integration in Britain were slim despite huge financial investment.

There’s so much more can be done to get the system working fairly and squarely.

Dan Liddicott, Independent Libertarian.

“I’d much rather allow for more free movement hand-in-hand with eliminating expectations of being subsidised by the state – or should I say, by the taxpayer”

From my perspective as an independent libertarian the matter of refugees and migrants is something that I’m often at odds with the mainstream about. In principle I am an advocate for free movement. I’d like the freedom and opportunity to relocate to anywhere in the world should I so wish. In principle I can hardly deny the same to others.

I’d much rather allow for more free movement hand-in-hand with eliminating expectations of being subsidised by the state – or should I say, by the taxpayer. There are many industrious and entrepreneurial migrants who would bring cultural richness and prosperity to the UK and it’s a pity if that should be curtailed by welfare state resources and other similar concerns. I’d like to see that migrants therefore have adequate medical insurance for their own needs. I’d like to see migrant sponsorship take a front seat through which those seeking residency here may be sponsored by someone who will take responsibility for their health and welfare and other needs rather than the taxpayer. Migration in this sense is a freedom of association issue more than a legal one, and in that sense ought to be none of the government’s business. The challenge comes with the practicalities, and the practicalities are made a mess of by too much state intervention and control in everyone’s lives.

Here in the UK the state insists on doing so much for us and to us. The welfare state with its benefits, state school, state housing and NHS can create just such a problem area. Where movement ought to be free, these finite services which we’re all coerced into paying for through taxation cannot be subject to infinite demand. Were NI payments actually ringfenced and treated as insurance for health treatments it would be a simpler thing to explain, but the hash various governments have made of that just adds to the mess. Migration becomes controlled to protect other things the state insists on controlling, however badly in either case.

Outlawing free movement, as with outlawing many things, simply creates a black market for less reputable people to make money from those desperate enough to attempt life threatening means to travel. It all adds up to a prime example of how so much government meddling requires even more government meddling to deal with its own consequences. Flights to Rwanda are just yet another example of the state trying to fix its own mess, making things messier by upping the stakes in a game of brinkmanship between government, black marketeers and desperate people. I think flying people to Rwanda is a terrible policy, there are better ways to deal with it, I’d rather hold people airside here, decide and then act. But I don’t think the UK is likely to improve its other policies any time soon, to mitigate the migrant effect or meddle less in our lives.

In all this I do believe each nation has the right and obligation to make its own laws regarding the entry of individuals within its borders. I’d like them to be freer as I have explained, but they are properly in the competence of each nation to decide. So, even though I think Priti Patel is an authoritarian with little regard for liberty and the correct role of government, as things stand I tend to reject the notion that the ECHR has anything to say on this.

Back to Part 3

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European Court of Human Rights – Your views, Part 3

We asked your views on: How should the government react to the ruling by the ECHR?

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Maureen Martin of the Christian Peoples Alliance.

“The desire for a better life is not a valid reason to illegally enter a nation and expect to be welcomed with open arms. They must go through the process legally”

This is the now very familiar battle between the rule of law and woke social justice or asylum seekers versus economic migrants. Nations without controlled, patrolled and hard boarders are not sovereign nations at all but merely what the USA calls sanctuaries for whosoever. The UK government has a responsibility to its legal citizens to ensure they carefully vet whom we allow into this country, this process must be governed by the rule of law and not fuzzy feelings of social justice policies, otherwise known as the European Court of Human Rights.

The ECHR is making rulings based upon individual appeals and of course as they are all in basically the same predicament the court has ruled similarly in each case. For one of these individuals the argument is being made that he was seeking a better life in the UK and would still be vulnerable in Rwanda. If the vulnerability of the individual is the issue, would he be vulnerable wherever he settled? What makes Rwanda a dangerous place for him? This is not clear. In addition to which seeking a better life makes him an economic migrant and not eligible for asylum seeker status. This must be addressed as the cry of human rights activists seems to focus on this point; it is not humane to deny someone the chance of a better life. The answer to that is if a better life is the goal, then the rule of law must be adhered to. The desire for a better life is not a valid reason to illegally enter a nation and expect to be welcomed with open arms. They must go through the process legally.

The UK government should pursue its mandate to protect our boarders and enforce its immigration laws and policies. The message must be sent to other nations, human traffickers, and drug smugglers that the UK is not open for illegal immigration business. If they know that asylum seekers will be sent to another closer/bordering nation it will deter those considering making the trip across the Chanel risking their lives in the process.

We have to look no further than the USA to ascertain that such policies are extremely effective. During the Trump administration the Stay in Mexico Policy was instrumental in controlling the Southern border with amazing results. The current administration has rolled out the welcome mat for whosoever resulting in record illegal immigration numbers, the highest in 97 years. We do not want the same in the UK.

Zack Stiling of the Heritage Party.

“it refuses to recognize the merit in deterring would-be asylum seekers from making the dangerous journeys across the English Channel”

The interference of the European Court of Human Rights in the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is disgraceful, but sadly predictable. I strongly doubt that any flights will ever go ahead, because the E.C.H.R. is unlikely to relent and I do not believe the Johnson administration really cares about cracking down on illegal immigration. Having mixed a preposterous cocktail of socialism, totalitarianism and spectacular economic cretinism during its first 2½ years, who can honestly expect the Johnson government to successfully implement a genuinely conservative policy?

Through its decision to suspend the flights, the E.C.H.R. has given up the pretence of existing to protect human rights and quite openly revealed its politicized agenda. The deportations do not contravene any part of the European Convention on Human Rights and yet the Court is happy to remain silent when serious contraventions do occur in Europe (the Convention is supposed to guarantee the right to personal liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of association, all of which are disregarded by so-called public health measures and the criminalization of ‘hate speech’). All migrants do, of course, have a right to live in Britain provided they follow the correct legal procedures and satisfy at least the same criteria as are required of all native-born British citizens.

The E.C.H.R. would appear to prefer the policy mooted in May of destroying a Yorkshire village by filling it with 1500 asylum seekers, at enormous cost to the British taxpayer. By the same margin, it refuses to recognize the merit in deterring would-be asylum seekers from making the dangerous journeys across the English Channel which have already resulted in dozens of them perishing. Perhaps the E.C.H.R. prefers them dead, or maybe it just thinks British resources should be stretched even further by having coastguards posted on 24-hour dinghy-watch.

An important distinction which must be made is that the right to life is the right not to be killed, not an entitlement to be spoon-fed by Nanny Taxpayer. If we presume that the E.C.H.R. would rather claim the latter (and we must presume much, for it is being so suspiciously cagey), we can be certain that it has abandoned any interest it may have had in protecting actual human rights in favour of trying to impose costly and community-destroying socialism on countries within its jurisdiction. To suggest that working taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet and young workers with no hope of ever buying a house should have money taken from them and given to people with no entitlement to British residence is much worse than crassly insulting.

As with the E.U., we again find ourselves being coerced into acting against our own interests by an unelected body. The best thing the government can possibly do is withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. As nice as it is to have such a convention, which looks on the surface to be so righteous and upstanding, its value is nil when existing clauses are ignored and non-existent ones are fabricated and used against us. Britain would be much better off with her own intelligently drafted human rights constitution.

Cllr Mary Lawes, The Foundation Party, Folkestone Town Council.

“We campaigned and won the right to be a sovereign nation. We must leave the ECHR and bring in a UK owned ‘Bill of Rights’”

Decisions taken by a foreign body on UK & it’s citizens, must be stopped at all costs.

When the rights of foreigners come before the country’s own citizens it’s time to leave. This is something that should have been done at the same time as leaving the EU. We campaigned and won the right to be a sovereign nation. We must leave the ECHR and bring in a UK owned ‘Bill of Rights’. This must be agreed by the people of this country not Parliament.

If in many years to come this country can sustain taking in large numbers of economic migrants, then great. However, the infrastructure is not in place for its own people never mind those illegally entering the UK. The country also needs to reduce the amount of work visa being issued to many countries around the world. 1,000,000 foreign nationals came to the UK on work Visa’s last year during Covid 19.

I, as a local Councillor see local people having to go back home to parents with their families in overcrowded housing condition. Families being separated and moved to other parts of the country. If you have a partner and cannot prove how long you have lived together you cannot live with them if the Council is helping them out.

In my local town there are no private properties available to rent as London Boroughs send those on their waiting lists to us and other towns. London Borough’s pay large deposits to landlords and agents to guarantee those on their waiting lists above locals. No social housing is being built even though there is such a huge need.

We have insufficient medical services, too few GP’s, patients unable to see a GP, too few beds in ICU units, overcrowded A&E departments.

Schools are overcrowded and having to spend time teaching foreign children English. Children leaving primary and secondary school illiterate. Insufficient vocational education, too many children being pushed for academic education. Pushing vast numbers to university instead of training for future carpenters, electricians, bricklayers, engineers, or plumbers.

If the country continues the way it is going, we will end up with most of the country’s citizens getting poorer with no housing, no education, mental health continuing to rocket. People dying as they would be unable to get any medical care.

People calling for more migrants to come, pushing wages down while trying to fight for better wages and conditions for those already here, is perverse. Businesses looking for cheap labour and rubbing their hands together. Let’s look after our own first and when we have improved our infrastructure and helped all our own then by all means put infrastructure in place and bring in those in need at an agreed number.

This whole of Parliament has for the last 6 years been pitting people against each other on all these matters. We need to have a grown-up conversation about this country going forward but this useless Parliament are incapable of doing so.

The people are the masters not the servants – we are stronger together.

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European Court of Human Rights – Your views, Part 2

We asked your views on: How should the government react to the ruling by the ECHR?

Back to Part 1 | On to Part 3

Freedom campaigner and former Brexit Party candidate Peter Sonnex.

“the ECtHR certainly had a role post WWII as human rights were consolidated and as nation states matured their domestic, accountable, justice systems. More recently, ECtHR judgements have been increasingly ignored, and therefore made irrelevant without enforcement”

I think we should leave the orbit of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on the basis we have a mature domestic justice system (albeit compromised for now by the relatively recent Supreme Court construct which can be fixed…). However, leaving is not straight forward as the ECtHR is tied to our membership of the 47 nation Council of Europe (what’s that all about?), and remains a condition of the UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

I worked in Whitehall for 5 years servicing UK commitments to a number of international treaties and conventions. Some were bilateral, multilateral or bound to international and supranational organisations for their administration. Clear to me was that the UK participated in, and contributed financially, to pretty much the lot!

Other countries, perhaps more discerning in their national interests, attended fewer. Some smaller state delegations were funded by non-government organisations where a vote was effectively bought to promote a particular outcome…

Special international courts may have a place where, with the agreement of affected states, domestic competence and capacity does not exist – often post conflict. The court is convened and financed for as long as it is necessary. Recent examples are for Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and the Rwanda Genocide.

The Council of Europe with the ECtHR certainly had a role post WWII as human rights were consolidated and as nation states matured their domestic, accountable, justice systems. More recently, ECtHR judgements have been increasingly ignored, and therefore made irrelevant without enforcement, by Russia and Ukraine (and Italy!?) in particular.

Russia has been suspended from the Council of Europe following its further interventions in Ukraine and, oddly, is therefore no longer even required to be bound. Any future special international tribunal for Ukraine could only be constituted with the agreement of Russia…

Bottom Line: the UK should leave the ECtHR on the basis it is expensive, not accountable, and is no longer relevant, credible or effective in the promotion and defence of human rights. As with many international and supranational organisations I saw in operation, they are toothless, self-licking lollipops…

Councillor Sandy Wallace of the Scottish Libertarian Party.

“I believe to an almost religious extent in free-market economics, and accordingly, I am an enthusiast for mass economic migration…. But a government must be in control of its borders, or it is not a sovereign government”

Firstly, let’s bear in mind that the ECHR ruling was not that the deportations should be abandoned, which is beyond their legal competence (as well BTW their intellectual competence). The ECHR ruled that the deportations should not go ahead until all (British) legal avenues had been exhausted. That’s actually fair enough. It’s our own fault that we have an idiotic level of no-risk judicial oversight where activist lawyers operating pro-Bono or on left-wing crowdfunding can cause delays without risking the award of costs again them.

Short term the government should react by pressing ahead, legally, with this policy. Medium-term they should react by closing loopholes that permit this level of legal politically motivated time-wasting challenge. Long term, as with all international obligations, from the UN downwards, the UK government should consider whether or not it wishes to remove itself from them. It is a nuclear option that should not be taken lightly, but neither should it be regarded as beyond consideration.

I believe to an almost religious extent in free-market economics, and accordingly, I am an enthusiast for mass economic migration. I place no upper limit on how many migrants the UK should accept. I would be comfortable with a net positive of half a million per year if they were carefully vetted, and yes, I would joyously lock block the Green belt to enable it. But a government must be in control of its borders, or it is not a sovereign government. I am content to see illegal immigrants deported with a life ban from entering the UK.

Opposition to illegal immigration does not require opposition to economic migrancy.

Nick Mane, local Brexiteer.

“The truth is, instead of helping poorer countries with aid and investment the EU decided to exploit it’s cheap youth and talent with an open door invitation”

The recent ruling from the European Court of Human Rights highlights some of many gargantuan evils which European Institutions, including the EU are continuing to rush headfirst to adopt.

The truth is, instead of helping poorer countries with aid and investment the EU decided to exploit it’s cheap youth and talent with an open door invitation. Mass immigration was the worst thing they could have done, just ask the EU’s abandoned, ageing rural populations and the bereaved families. Immigration was not the answer but it suited Merkel’s aspirations to import cheap labour at the cost of all Europeans to grow productivity.

Thousands drowned, countless girls raped and forced into the sex industry and thousands left to die in the Sahara dessert by crooked people traffickers. All this for immigrants who can afford people trafficker fees of £20,000, enough to build them a home in their own country.

This was sold as an humanitarian act but when did Angela Merkel ever care about all the Greek pensioners who had their pensions stripped and public servants who were thrown out of their jobs or the massive EU youth unemployment caused across Europe in the aftermath of the 2007 crisis? The EU protected the Euro by not allowing their member states to spend on job creation, simple. They certainly never cared for high wages for their own workers, so it opened the floodgates to mass immigration, not because Merkel’s a loving, caring, matriarch but with the sole intention to import cheap labour.

All this because of Centralised, Unaccountable Power. Nobody cares in distant, lavish offices for what happens to people in Watford or Kilmarnock! Decentralising power, taking influence and resolutions closer to the electorate has been the rallying cry across the whole of the UK for decades simply because the best people to identify and resolve issues are those closest to the issues.

Brexit was supposed to free us from EU perils, to return our supremacy of Laws and borders but Boris, being the consummate politician, tried to keep everyone happy by selling our Laws and borders out to the EU and splitting up the UK. Ultimately, we were all sold out.

So here we are, the EU caused this massive problem and as we no longer control our borders and laws, the EU is flexing it’s muscles to say they still rule us. Our only rational way forwards might include any or all of the following :-

Ditch the European Human Rights Act and replace it with our own Bill.
Ditch European Law supremacy
Ditch Boris
Invest in the UK in sectors such as manufacturing, technologies, infrastructure.
Defund any legal service which chooses to cynically exploit our legal funding system
Create our own basic constitution to protect us from abuse of power from our own politicians. We had no choice over lockdowns, no choice in handing over sovereignty to a foreign power, no protection over police investigating the public for the ‘wrong type of thinking’.
Make cancel culture a criminal act, we need our history, our comedians, our freedom of speech.
Make the BBC impartial or defund it.

It would also be really nice if the UK has an opposition party which is capable of challenging for power, a party which is practical, capable of independent, rational, coherent thinking to fill the vacuum which is sucking us into a void of mad shouty people intent on dominating debates.

The Loony left is not only back with a vengeance, it’s now mainstream.

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European Court of Human Rights – Your views, Part 1

We asked your views on: How should the government react to the ruling by the ECHR?

On to Part 2

Les Beaumont stood for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Pitshanger Ward, London Borough of Ealing in May’s local elections.

“Whatever the outcome, the government should withdraw from The Convention and replace the existing UK Human Rights Act, which enshrines The Convention into British law”

As a member of the Council of Europe and a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, the UK really has no choice but to follow The ECHR’s urgent interim measure and await its full judgement. I’m not sure if the UK can appeal the interim order in the meantime.

Whatever the outcome, the government should withdraw from The Convention and replace the existing UK Human Rights Act, which enshrines The Convention into British law, with an Act that provides the same protections as The Convention but with the UK Supreme Court as the final arbiter. It should also commit to enshrine any future changes to The Convention into UK law, subject to there being no jurisdictions outside the UK courts.

Having served notice of its withdrawal from The Convention, the government should urgently consider ignoring any rulings of The ECHR and rely on the rulings of the UK Supreme Court on those matters.

Brexit campaigner Georgina Guillem.

“Human Rights did not begin with the ECHR the UK has always had the reputation for setting high standards both domestically and internationally”

The ECHR has stopped the first fight of Asylum Seekers to Rwanda. This of course should have been considered as all European institutions (EU or otherwise) will do all it can to thwart whatever the UK does to try to address this problem. Likewise, all the do-gooders that protest. There must be a solution to this ever-increasing problem of mostly young men arriving by boat without trying to be accepted through the right channels. Human Rights did not begin with the ECHR the UK has always had the reputation for setting high standards both domestically and internationally.

Not to honour a treaty once signed is wrong, however the safeguard of the UK must be considered, therefore it is also wrong not to put its wellbeing first. A true Brexiteer wanted to leave the EU, all the institutions of Europe and return full sovereignty without a deal, had we done this we might not have had all this agony. Also the Northern Ireland Mess might have been avoided.

Brexiter Jeremy Wraith who has contributed several articles to our site.

“Why did the interviewer on Sky not ask him why they did not walk into one of the British embassies in the many safe countries they crossed and ask for asylum there, France in particular?”

I watched an interview on Sky TV with the Chief Executive of the Refugee Council. He said that the refugees have a human right to come to the UK and claim asylum here as the refugees in Palestine cannot walk into the British Embassy in Palestine to ask for asylum. Why did the interviewer on Sky not ask him why they did not walk into one of the British embassies in the many safe countries they crossed and ask for asylum there, France in particular?

I firmly believe that the UK should cancel its involvement in the ECHR as the UK is perfectly capable of defending the human rights of its own citizens. So why are we relying on foreign bodies to dictate our human rights policies for us.

The quicker we withdraw from many other European and EU treaties and rules the better!

“If a signatory country is prevented from deciding who can enter and, therefore, whom it can legally deport, it is no longer sovereign”

Chris Scott stood for Reform UK in the Horley Central and South Ward of Reigate & Banstead Council, in May’s local elections.

I’m no lawyer, nor even a student, so my response will be based mainly on what I’ve gleaned from media interviews and discussions since the eleventh-hour ECHR ruling on the planned Home Office deportation flight to Kigali last week.

Although there was a lack of transparency by the ECHR on which judge, or judges were hurriedly called in to rule on deportations that had just been ruled legal by our own Supreme Court – the third English court to consider the appellants’ case – I guess it was unlikely that the Home Secretary would have been prepared to flout the decision on this occasion. I wonder, however, if the Home Office lawyers were expecting it and, if so, whether Miss Patel had been warned of the probability. Flouting international law is not something one would want or expect HMG to do in haste.

The UK was, evidently, the chief author of the original convention on human rights for Europe in the aftermath of the horrific events that were revealed during and after WW2. That we should have drafted it was right and proper. We had been the only European combatant to maintain our democratic freedoms during the war and had played a major part – initially single-handed, but for the stout help of our Empire countries – in saving Europe and much of the world from tyranny.

A court, also bearing the initials ECHR, was created. But, as I understand it, the convention’s original provisions have been extended and others added to the extent that the court seems even to have become a threat to national sovereignty. If a signatory country is prevented from deciding who can enter and, therefore, whom it can legally deport, it is no longer sovereign. Based in the same campus as the European parliament in Strasbourg, one suspects that the Court’s advocates may share similar aspirations to members of the Council of Europe and Eurocrats who, for reasons of their own, wish to lessen the autonomy of the EU’s nation states.

There is, therefore, a strong argument for the UK to withdraw from the ECHR and to give precedence to a new bill of rights seven decades after we framed it. This would doubtless provoke wide international condemnation, much of it sneering and disingenuous, from countries that have in many cases come late to the table of human rights. After all, it started here in Blighty over eight centuries ago with Magna Carta. The UK should continue to hold its head high on human rights and perhaps take a new lead, as we did in 1950.

On to Part 2

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