The Conservative party faces “electoral oblivion in a matter of months” unless ministers block all human rights laws used to halt deportation flights to Rwanda, Suella Braverman has told MPs.
In a personal statement to the Commons, the former home secretary urged Rishi Sunak to build at pace “Nightingale” detention centres and stop all legal challenges using domestic and international laws.
In a five-point plan, she said the prime minister should force parliament to sit over Christmas to get the emergency bill through and amend the illegal migration bill to stop individual legal challenges.
Her intervention comes as the government prepares emergency legislation that will declare the central African country to be safe and that aims to curb legal challenges against the policy.
Sunak is under intense pressure from both wings of his party, with reports that centre-left MPs are threatening to vote against the government if the bill forces the UK to walk away from the European convention on human rights.
The government is likely to rule out the most hardline options favoured by Braverman amid fears that ministers could resign if the UK was viewed as overriding international law.
Surrounded by supporters from the Common Sense Group and the New Conservatives as she addressed the Commons, Braverman said the government must block all possible interventions. “It is now or never. The Conservative party faces electoral oblivion in a matter of months if we introduce yet another bill destined to fail,” she said.
No 10 has been considering two options for the bill. The first, the so-called semi-skimmed option, would disapply only the UK’s Human Rights Act in asylum claims. However, this would not prevent challenges by individual claimants, sources said.
The second, “full-fat” option would remove the right of judicial review and include “notwithstanding clauses”, which would allow ministers to ignore the European court of human rights (ECHR) and international treaties in the area of asylum. It is understood that ministers are closing in on a “middle way” between the two options.
Backed by the Tories’ hard right, Braverman has previously accused Sunak of “magical thinking” because he has held back from blocking all human rights laws.
She told MPs that the emergency legislation must enable flights before the next election by blocking off all routes of challenge. “The powers to detain and remove must be exercisable notwithstanding the Human Rights Act, the European convention on human rights, the refugee convention and all other international law,” she said.
Based on the way Nightingale hospitals were built at pace during the Covid 19 pandemic, she called for detention facilities to be built by the armed forces to hold tens of thousands of asylum seekers who could be deported to Rwanda.
Braverman said: “The bill must enable the administrative detention of illegal arrivals until they are removed. And, just as we rapidly built Nightingale hospitals to deal with Covid, so too we must build Nightingale-style detention facilities to deliver the necessary capacity. Greece and Turkey have done similarly. The only way to do this, as I advocated for in government, is with support from the MoD.”
She added: “Parliament should be prepared to sit over Christmas to get this bill passed.”
Tory sources said Sunak and his home secretary, James Cleverly, had been talking to Tory colleagues before the bill is published and were confident it would win the approval of both wings of the Tory party.
“The Conservatives want to stop the boats and tackle illegal immigration,” said a spokesperson. “This bill is a key component of getting those numbers down.”
