Dominic Grieve has said Farage’s draconian plans would likely be struck down by the courts
Even if Nigel Farage “unpicked Britain” from human rights laws, the courts would likely block his attempts at mass deportation, former attorney general Dominic Grieve has said.
The Reform UK leader is set to announce his extreme mass deportation plans in a speech this morning.
It is understood that if Farage is elected prime minister at the next election, he would want to forcibly remove hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers if they don’t accept a £2,500 payment and a free flight to leave the UK.
He has pledged that five deportation flights would leave the UK every day. He has also announced plans to house asylum seekers in detention centres on military bases.
Grieve has told The Independent that Farage’s plans would likely be blocked by the courts, even if he scraps crucial international agreements like the UN Convention on Torture, the Refugee Convention and the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
The former attorney general has pointed out that if the UK leaves the ECHR this would also lead to the collapse of the post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU.
Grieve said there will also be huge political upheaval if Farage pursues these draconian plans, and that people “will mount campaigns of various sorts against it”.
He also told The Independent that the courts are likely to intervene. “You still can’t rule out that a court might – in the case of somebody where it was quite clear they were going to be deported, in circumstances where their lives would be seriously at risk in their home country – intervene to stop deportation under customary law or even the common law,” he said.
He said that the “single biggest problem” is that countries are unlikely to be willing to take back migrants that he wants to deport, especially if there is no bilateral agreement in place.
In addition, there are big question marks around the cost of such plans. In April, former Reform MP Rupert Lowe and the Centre for Migration Control claimed the plans would cost £47.5bn. Reform is now suggesting it would cost £10bn.
Reform has dismissed these criticisms but has yet to set out how the plan would work or how much it would cost.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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