Suella Braverman, the former Home Secretary sacked by Rishi Sunak last month, gave her resignation speech in the House of Commons this afternoon, in which she said Sunak has one last chance to pass a Bill that will actually stop the boats. Here is her speech in full.
Madame Deputy Speaker, I’m very grateful for the opportunity to make this statement and I’d like to put on record my wishes to Mr. Speaker that he makes a speedy recovery.
Madame Deputy Speaker, serving in cabinet for just under four years has been a true honour and I’m thankful for the opportunity and grateful to the many civil servants with whom I worked.
We achieved a great deal in the last 12 months: landmark legislation in the Public Order Act and the National Security Act; 20,000 new police officers – more than England and Wales have ever seen before; one of the largest ever pay rises for the police; greater powers to dismiss rogue officers; and a review of legal protections to empower our brave firearms officers.
But Madame Deputy Speaker, I want to talk about the crisis on which I spent more time in office working than any other: mass, uncontrolled, illegal immigration. We are all familiar with the problem. Tens of thousands of mostly young men – many with values and social mores at odds with our own – pouring into our country day after day, month after month, year after year.
Many come from safe countries. Many are not refugees but are economic migrants. All have paid thousands of pounds to criminal gangs to break into Britain. All have come from a safe country: France – who, let’s face it, should be doing so much more to stop them.
This is putting unsustainable pressure on our public finances and our public services. It’s straining community cohesion, jeopardising national security and harming public safety. The British people understand all this, Madame Deputy Speaker. The question is, does the Government? And will it now finally act to stop it?
The Prime Minister rightly committed to doing whatever it takes to stop the boats. And he should be commended for dedicating more time and toil than any of his predecessors to this endeavour. And unlike the leader of the opposition, who would rather bury his head in the sand, he has actually advanced a plan.
We made some progress during my tenure as Home Secretary. The overall crossings have fallen by 30%. The number of illegal Albanian arrivals is down by 90%. And we were starting to close down asylum hotels.
But, Madame Deputy Speaker, ‘crossings are down’ is not the same as ‘stopping the boats’. As Home Secretary, I consistently advocated legislative measures that would have secured the delivery of our Rwanda partnership as soon as the Bill became law.
Last summer, following defeat in the Court of Appeal, I advised that we should scrap rather than continue passage of the Illegal Migration Bill, in favour of a more robust alternative that excluded international and human rights laws. When that was rejected, I urged that we needed to work up a credible Plan B in the event of a Supreme Court loss.
Following defeat in the Supreme Court, the Prime Minister has finally agreed to introduce emergency legislation. And I welcome his decision. But, Madame Deputy Speaker it is now three weeks on from that judgment and we are yet to see a Bill. I’m told its publication is imminent. But we are running out of time. This is an emergency and we need to see the Bill now.
Madame Deputy Speaker, my deeper concern, however, relates to the substance of what may be in that Bill. Previous attempts have failed because they failed to address the root cause of the problem: expansive human rights laws, flowing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), replicated in Labour’s Human Rights Act, are being interpreted elastically by courts domestic and foreign, to literally prevent our Rwanda plan from getting off the ground.
And this problem relates to so much more than just illegal arrivals. From my time as Home Secretary, I can say that the same human rights framework is producing insanities that the public would scarcely believe.
Foreign terrorists we can’t deport – because of their human rights. Terrorists that we have to let back in – because of their human rights. Foreign rapists and paedophiles who should have been removed but are released back into the communities only to reoffend. Yep – because of their human rights. Violent criminals pulled off deportation flights at the last minute – thanks to the help of Labour MPs – free to wander our streets and commit further horrific crimes, including murder. Protestors let off the hook for tearing down statues and gluing themselves to roads. And our brave military veterans being harassed by courts some 40 years after their service.
Madame Deputy Speaker, it is no secret that I support leaving the ECHR and replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights that protects the vulnerable and our national security, and finishes the job of Brexit by extricating us from the foreign court and restores real parliamentary sovereignty. But I accept that the Government won’t do that and that it’s a debate for another day.
Crucially, when it comes to stopping the boats now, leaving the ECHR is not the only way to cut the Gordian Knot. Emergency legislation would enable this only if it meets the following tests.
Firstly, the Bill must address the Supreme Court’s concerns about the safety of Rwanda. Secondly, the Bill 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.
Thirdly, the Bill must remedy deficiencies in the Illegal Migration Act to ensure that removals can take place within days of people arriving illegally, rather than allowing individual challenges which drag on for months. Fourth, 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 we must build Nightingale-style detention facilities to deliver the necessary capacity. Greece and Turkey have done so. And the only way to do this, as I advocated for in Government, is with support from the Ministry of Defence. Fifth, Parliament should be prepared to sit over Christmas to get this Bill passed.
All of this, Madame Deputy Speaker, comes down to a simple question: who governs Britain? Where does ultimate authority in the U.K. lie? Is it with the British people and their elected representatives? Or is it in the vague, shifting and unaccountable concept of ‘international law’.
On Monday, Madame Deputy Speaker, the Prime Minister announced measures that start to better reflect public frustration on legal migration. He can now follow that up with a Bill that reflects public fury on illegal migration and actually stop the boats.
Madame Deputy Speaker, 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. Do we fight for sovereignty or let our party die? Now I may not always have found the right words in the past, Madame Deputy Speaker, but I refuse to sit by and allow us to fail. The trust that millions of people placed in us cannot be discarded like an inconvenient detail.
If we summon the political courage to do what is truly necessary, difficult though it may be, to fight for the British people, we will regain their trust. And, if the Prime Minister leads that fight, he has my total support.
Stop Press: Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has resigned from the Government after its emergency Rwanda legislation stopped short of disapplying the European Convention on the Human Rights (ECHR). Read his resignation letter in full here.
Stop Press 2: The Telegraph‘s Ross Clark says “Suella Braverman is right – the Tories face oblivion if they don’t stop illegal migrants. The British public have had enough of perverse human rights judgments making it impossible for the Government to control our borders”.
Stop Press 3: The Rwandan Government has suggested it would have pulled out of its deportation deal with the U.K. if Britain had opted out of international human rights laws – the reason Sunak has told MPs that he held back from doing so.
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Amazing how so many Tories now want to do something to impress the voters whereas for 13 years they did nothing useful to curtail immigration.
Amazing too that so many Ministers make statements about what they wanted to do while in office but were prevented by their PM or the Courts. How come they didn’t resign the second time the PM refused to back them.
A bit simplistic.——-I would rather have 10 Braverman’s than 1000 Sunak’s
Within a fortnight of leaving her post her replacement jetted off to Rwanda and signed a new treaty that allows, wait for it…. …Rwanda to send refugees and undesirables to the UK in a bid to establish that Rwanda is a safe place for us to send asylum seekers. Make of this what you will.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1842419/rwanda-immigration-asylum-james-cleverly
No doubt our quality of life and standard of living will go down if this uncontrolled immigration doesn’t stop all over Europe because it’s taking its toll. This is evidenced in this new comprehensive Dutch study looking at the cost of immigration in the Netherlands over a 25 year period. I’m not sure if similar data are already available for the UK;
”A new study from the University of Amsterdam reveals the enormous costs of mass immigration to the Netherlands over a nearly 25-year timeframe, with the 278-page report adding to the growing list of evidence refuting claims that migrants contribute to national budgets in the West, create jobs, and prop up faltering pension systems.
The landmark study, entitled “Borderless Welfare State: The Consequences of Immigration on Public Finances,” shows that net costs of immigration to the Dutch public sector over the period 1995-2019 were an astounding 400 billion euros, averaging €17 billion a year, with a peak of €32 billion in 2016 due to the 2015 “refugee crisis.”
To put these figures in perspective, the Dutch government spent around €30 billion on education in 2016, €2 billion less than it spent on migrants in the same year.
The four experienced researchers from the prestigious University of Amsterdam’s School of Economics department write that they “had access to unique, anonymized microdata from Statistics Netherlands on all inhabitants of the country. In estimating the fiscal impact of immigration, the net lifetime contribution of immigrants to public coffers was estimated by employing the method of generational accounting.”
The authors, based on copious amounts of data, also warn that either immigration will have to be curtailed or the Dutch welfare system will have to face dramatic cuts:
Government spending on immigrants is now above average for items such as education, social security and benefits. Immigrants, on the other hand, pay less taxes and social security premiums on average. When added together, the net costs of immigration turn out to be considerable: for immigrants who entered in the period 1995-2019 alone, these are 400 billion euros, an amount in the order of magnitude of the total Dutch natural gas revenues from the 1960s onwards. These costs are mainly the result
of redistribution through the welfare state. Continuing immigration with its current size and cost structure will put increasing pressure on public finances. Curtailment of the welfare state and/or immigration will then be inevitable.
Given the report’s finding, it can be argued that the entire national revenue of the Netherlands from fracking and other natural gas extraction measures, over the course of approximately 60 years, went entirely to feeding, housing, educating, and providing medical treatment for migrants and their children in the country.”
https://rmx.news/economy/netherlands-spent-e400-billion-on-migrants-between-1995-and-2019-according-to-new-landmark-study/
Extensive comment….cheers. ——–The EU started all of this and our own political class mostly want to be back in there. They don’t work for us. They work for the global government in waiting who seek to destroy National Identities, and what better way to do that than by mixing us all together so we just feel like citizens of the world. “Stop the Boats” is a feeble slogan from a feeble bunch of hand wringing parasites.
Don’t forget about the influence of think talks like Open Society and Common purpose.
Theatre. And I’m not paying for a ticket.
Multiple upticks.
Withdrawing from the ECHR may well be the right thing to do but it’s in no way related to Brexit as the ECHR is not a EU institution. The judge who struck down the Rwanda plan also claimed that the decision would as well follow from various UN convention on human- and regfugee-rights and not just from the ECHR. And there’s obviously still the issue that legal immigration dwarfs illegal immigration and is at an all-time-high despite the government can perfectly well control it.
All of this makes Braverman appear more than a little dishonest.
“And there’s obviously still the issue that legal immigration dwarfs illegal immigration and is at an all-time-high despite the government can perfectly well control it.
All of this makes Braverman appear more than a little dishonest.”
I will agree with you on this.
Are you saying that as the ECHR was not part of the apparatus that established ab initio the EEC/EU it is not “part” of the EU – correct in that narrow strict sense but wholly wrong in every other facet. You are missing the point by a million miles.
if you imagine that these migrants were being facilitated by the UK to go to France, or Holland , would that be “ allowed” by the French – or the Dutch ????? The French would ignore any UK Court of Human Rights ruling that they cannot be returned to the UK and have to accept economic migrants sent eastwards – if they allowed them to come ashore – which is the effect of ECHR rulings on matters concerning a foreign sovereign State.
A single criminal act by just one economic migrant from the safe country that is France should have the French State as an accessory to that crime in the UK courts – every time – and they should be fined an enormous amount of money for every one of these illegal migrants that sets foot on UK soil: how do you think the ECHR Judges would decide if the UK government took the French Stare to the ECHR ( in a case to uphold the human rights of British citizens) for aiding and abetting illegal immigration and criminal traffickers ?? Would they find against the French State – do dogs crap on their own doorsteps ?
Are you saying that as the ECHR was not part of the apparatus that established ab initio the EEC/EU it is not “part” of the EU – correct in that narrow strict sense but wholly wrong in every other facet. You are missing the point by a million miles.
The point is that it has European in the name and that Braverman wants to brexel about something because she expects that to have voter support. There is no such thing as correct in the narrow sense, but, tertiam non datur, it’s either true (correct) or not true (incorrect). As it’s not true here and she certainly knows this, she’s intentionally misrepresenting the situation.
if you imagine that these migrants were being facilitated by the UK to go to France, or Holland , would that be “ allowed” by the French – or the Dutch ????? The French would ignore any UK Court of Human Rights ruling that they cannot be returned to the UK and have to accept economic migrants sent eastwards – if they allowed them to come ashore – which is the effect of ECHR rulings on matters concerning a foreign sovereign State.
The court ruling in question came from the UK supreme court and not from the European Court of Human Rights and it explicitly cited UN conventions about human and refugee rights among the reasons for the rejection of the so-called Rwanda plan. Hence, there was no intrusion of a foreign body on UK sovereignity here and focussing on the ECHR despite its presence of absence wouldn’t make a difference is a smokescreen.
This statement is also highly suspect:
Foreign terrorists we can’t deport – because of their human rights. Terrorists that we have to let back in – because of their human rights. Foreign rapists and paedophiles who should have been removed but are released back into the communities only to reoffend. Yep – because of their human rights. Violent criminals pulled off deportation flights at the last minute – thanks to the help of Labour MPs – free to wander our streets and commit further horrific crimes, including murder.
because its speaking in general terms without naming a single, specific example. Braverman apparently believes that government could function much more effectively if those darned human rights didn’t exist. That’s indeed the case for the so-called rule of law — it’s supposed to limit what government may do, and the government may decree anything mode of operation effective from 2020 – 2022 was certainly much more comfortable for government functionaries. There’s an important question here, namely, what’s the ratio of terrorists and pedophiles vs ordinary people who went on walks with a friend despite this was prohibited for public safety and who didn’t wear facemasks? Is the former the norm or the latter?
When you say “terrorists and pedohpiles” I’m assuming the latter was caught in a crime. Not all pedos are criminals and are open about their sexuality. I’m sure there are places in the world you could just change ‘pedo’ with homosexual and people would assume a criminal.
Fully agree with this overview. Illegal immigration is nought as compared to legal immigration which, as you point out, could be controlled easily. In fact, the Channel crossings, in some respects, serves to distract peoples’ attention away from the huge, intentional, society changing agenda of legal migration that is taking place. .
Braverman is no more to be trusted than any other careerist Tory on immigration control. Like Doris and May before her, if she got the top job, which some think she is positioning herself for, she will do the bidding of the globalists also. .
Sunak has no intention of stopping the boats.
He usurped Truss to stop her stopping the boats.
He and his 5th column of activist lawyers and civil servants are doing all within their power to keep the borders open.
Can we stop pretending please?
Private Fraser will have the last word.
We’re doomed!
Doomed I tell ya!
“All of this, Madame Deputy Speaker, comes down to a simple question: who governs Britain?”
That would be Klaus and his soon to be successor Tony ‘the ID’ Blair.
Exactly.
It is a dark situation. You can read every week about local authorities going bankrupt. You can’t just create a situation where your own people can’t find places to live and then introduce a city’s worth of people every year into the country with no increase in provision. In a few months time these issues will come to boiling point. You can’t address a labour shortage caused by medication damage by bringing more people in because those disabled by the stabbination are still occupying living spaces and their requirements in terms of costly medical interventions will have increased dramatically. They have brought about the most toxic situation possible.
The Channel crossers fulfill 2 purposes: they distract attention away from legal immigration at population-replacement levels and they supply garrisons placed around the country to be used against us when the time is right.
We’ll know that time is near when there’s a huge fall in the numbers crossing.
I understand the attraction of cheap labour but is it really worth it? Most of my family live abroad and they don’t even like coming back to visit anymore because of how much it has changed.They used to come back all the time. We should be aware of this.
Normal people understand greed and rapaciousness. There are realms of venality that we ordinary folk do not know. We would never go there but they are happy to pursue those aims. All of us exist in echo chambers the real rapists have theirs too. We shouldn’t hate them. Hate the sin not the sinner. Lets face it our entire ruling class has been Epsteined.
The right man for the job is clearly this woman! She speaks to the concerns of the people in a way that is relevant. She has heard the concerns and is determined to address them.
With her in charge I might just vote for the Tories – but only if they adopt a similar robust response to Net Zero and dismiss the Hallett money -making caravan and start accepting common sense and the evolving scientific reality to future pandemic management. Rejecting the WHO takeover of British sovereignty for the future management of WHO decreed health issues is of paramount importance in this respect.
We need more conviction politicians that actually represent the electorate and fewer career politicians interested only in feeding at a publicly funded trough and feathering their own nests.
Starmer spilled the beans on the Rwandan deal where we pay for the migrants for their stay in Rwanda for 5years plus having to take, no doubt, the sickest Rwandans back in return.
I would put them up in guarded seperate sex camps with UN standard tents, temporary toilet & shower blocks, 3 meals of whatever is cheapest to provide, on royal land in Scotland with no phones, no internet and leave them to it.
It is cheaper for us than hotels & might put some of them off.