Conservative politician Chris Philp committed his party to scrapping tribunals, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to speed up deportations and stripping judges of their powers to rule on migrants’ appeals.
As shadow home secretary, Philp would now be expected to oversee such changes to asylum and immigration. Under plans he announced and expected to be adopted by the Tories, the role of judges will be greatly reduced. Philp argues that judges didn’t just block the attempts by successive governments to deport illegal migrants and foreign criminals but actively used their powers to make the court system “more and more permissive to the migrant.”
Philp’s speech to the London-based Policy Exchange think tank was populated with a rogue’s gallery of migrants whose supporters in the legal profession made their stay in the country possible. These include a Ghanaian criminal deported 12 years ago who was allowed back into Britain under the ECHR after claiming that he was feeling depressed in his birth country. Also prominent was the notorious case of the Albanian crook whose son “disliked the texture of foreign chicken nuggets,” beating deportation. Other migrants pretended to be homosexual, facing persecution in their home countries.
With one eye on the electoral challenge posed by Reform UK, Philp will say the Tories would both quit the ECHR and scrap the judicial tribunal system which migrants can use to appeal against their removal from Britain.
If elected, immigration decisions under the Conservatives would be made by the Home Office—with migrants only allowed a quick internal appeal process, speeding up deportations. Under these circumstances, 98% of cases would move from judges to the government itself.
