Tory infighting over Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered Rwanda plan has descended into civil war as a former deputy prime minister compared Suella Braverman to Vladimir Putin.
Damian Green, deputy PM under Theresa May, said the sacked home secretary wanted to do “what Putin and Xi Jinping do” in her latest bid to ensure deportation flights to Rwanda can take off.
Ms Braverman, sacked by Mr Sunak on Monday, said the prime minister’s plan to salvage the Rwanda scheme is unlikely to see asylum seekers deported to the country before the next election.
Hours after the Supreme Court ruled his deportation scheme unlawful, Mr Sunak said he would bring in emergency laws to deem Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers and sign a new treaty with the country to address the court’s concerns.
But Ms Braverman warned his two-part plan would get snarled up in domestic and European courts as she demanded introducing legislation that “excludes all avenues of legal challenge”.
A key Braverman ally meanwhile warned that without a crackdown on small boats, “people will turn to other forces”.
Ex-cabinet minister Simon Clarke also called for a general election on the issue – saying: “We need the legislation that is brought forward to be truly effective, and if the Lords block it - let’s take it to the country.”
But a second senior Tory accused Ms Braverman of behaving like a dictator.
Former minister Tobias Ellwood said her behaviour was: “Completely incompatible with both our democratic and Party values. Bypassing scrutiny to expedite law change is straight from the dictator’s handbook.”
Rishi Sunak rejected her call saying his plan was “not about over-ruling laws”. He also denied her allegation his plan was “tinkering”. “No.. the progress we’ve made this year on tackling this issue is meaningful,” he said on a visit to Bolsover.
In an article for The Daily Telegraph, Ms Braverman said a “solution” to the challenge of stopping migrants crossing the English Channel “demands of the Government an end to self-deception and spin”.
“There must be no more magical thinking,” she added. “Tinkering with a failed plan will not stop the boats.”
Ms Braverman argued that “amending our agreement with Rwanda and converting it into a treaty, even with explicit obligations on non-refoulement, will not solve the fundamental issue”.
Instead, she said ministers should address concerns raised by the five senior judges about Rwanda’s asylum and legal system by “embedding UK observers and independent reviewers of asylum decisions”.
New legislation should be laid in Westminster to “exclude all avenues of legal challenge” so that international obligations, such as the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), are “disapplied by way of clear ‘notwithstanding clauses’”, she said.
Ms Braverman called Parliament sit over Christmas to rush the new law through and warned a new treaty with Rwanda would “still require going back through the courts”, which could take at least a year.
Even a victory in domestic courts would only mean the “saga would simply relocate to Strasbourg where the European court would take its time deciding if it liked our laws”, she said.
“That is why the plan outlined by the PM will not yield flights to Rwanda before an election if Plan B is simply a tweaked version of the failed Plan A,” Ms Braverman added.
Her proposals were slammed by legal experts and Tory colleagues as the split in the Conservative Party over the Rwanda plan grows.
Mr Green, chairman of the One Nation group of moderate Tory MPs, said Ms Braverman’s suggestion Britain disregards international law is “the most unconservative statement I have ever heard from a Conservative politician”.
He said: “Giving the state the explicit power to override every legal constraint is what Putin and Xi do. We absolutely cannot go there.”
And the former head of the government legal department slammed Ms Braverman’s proposals.
Jonathan Jones KC said: “For the sake of putting (at most) a few hundred people on a plane to a place recently found to be unsafe by our highest court [not a foreign court]: She wants the UK to breach every relevant international treaty on torture, mis-treatment, detention or fair process.”
Former Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Normington also poured cold water on Ms Braverman’s proposal, saying "I really don't think that that is possible. I think in the end the Supreme Court wouldn't allow that.
"I'm not a lawyer, but in the end it's just against all normal rights, isn't it, to remove the rights of people to go to the courts?", he told BBC Radio 4.
Mr Green said he would oppose any proposal to pass a law seeking to block the application of international treaties.
He told the BBC: “It’s not just all our own laws passed by Parliament, and all international treaties that we have signed, that Suella wants to sweep away," he said.
"She specifically says let’s sweep away all judicial review protection, and all common law protections, and that’s why I said on Twitter that this is the most unconservative proposal I have ever heard.
"Conservatives believe in a democratic country run by the rule of law. And dictators, Xi and Putin, would prefer to have the state completely untrammelled by any law. And so, as a democrat I oppose it.
"As a Conservative, because if we Conservatives don’t believe that the state should be controlled by the law, that the Government has to obey the law as much as you or I have to obey the law, then that seems to me to be very profoundly unconservative.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer slammed Mr Sunak for chasing “expensive gimmicks” and instead pursue a “serious solution” to the “very serious problem” of small boat channel crossings.
But veteran right-wing Tory MP Sir Bill Cash said Mr Sunak’s emergency Rwanda legislation is “no good” if it does not have clear so-called “notwithstanding” clauses.
He said: “The position is that if the law in a statute is expressly stated, clear and unambiguous, then the courts will follow that legislation.”
Responding to criticism of the potential for Britain to be in breach of its international obligations, Sir Bill said “the idea that international law is not broken by other countries... it’s completely false”.
Sir Bill, who has practised as a constitutional lawyer, told The Independent: “There are some people who believe that it is an absolutely standalone requirement to obey international law, when actually it is well known that in many, many cases, there are moments of national interest where a breach of international law can be justified.
“And it is already conducted by many other states including the EU itself, let alone France, Germany, Denmark... I could go through the list.”
And he warned of a "constitutional crisis" if the House of Lords blocks the laws, expected to be put to parliament within days.
Sir Bill also told The Independent the upper chamber is "an unelected body" and "would be putting itself in jeopardy" if it opposed the prime minister’s plan.
But, in a warning to Mr Sunak, Sir Bill said his bill must be "clear and unambiguous" about the need to disapply international treaties which judges may rely on to block it.
Mr Sunak’s response to the Supreme Court judgment on Wednesday saw him announce that his administration plans to lay down emergency legislation to have Parliament deem Rwanda a “safe” country.
He also intends to broker a new legally binding treaty on top of the £140 million deal already struck with Kigali to take migrants arriving in Britain via small boats.
The yet-to-be-published treaty with Rwanda is expected to attempt to address the Supreme Court’s concerns around refoulement – the potential for refugees whose applications for asylum are rejected by Kigali to be sent back to the country they are fleeing from.
