Jame Cleverly: Rwanda Plan Not ‘Be All and End All’

The home secretary said leaving the ECHR has trade-offs after his predecessor said the convention has to be blocked to get deportation flight in the air.

Home Secretary James Cleverly leaves 10 Downing Street, London, following a Cabinet meeting on Nov. 22, 2023. Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

James Cleverly said he has been frustrated that the government’s plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda has been seen as the “be all and end all” to stopping the boats.

The new home secretary suggested leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which some believe is a necessary step for the UK to reassert sovereign control over its asylum system, may be counterproductive because it would undermine the UK’s “key co-operation” with countries that are “very wedded” to the convention.

Setting out his stall in his first interview as home secretary with The Times of London, Mr. Cleverly also suggested police can do more to deal with anti-Semitic behaviour in recent protests.

The former foreign secretary replaced Suella Braverman as home secretary last week after Ms. Braverman accused police chiefs of taking biased approaches to policing left-wing and right-wing protests in an article that was not cleared by Downing Street.

He inherited the Home Office brief two days before the Supreme Court ruled against the Rwanda policy and 10 days before the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures showing record-high net migration.

Mr. Cleverly has pledged to upgrade the agreement with Rwanda to a treaty to address the Supreme Court’s concern that asylum seekers could be returned to their home countries.

The government also hasn’t ruled out leaving the ECHR, although Mr. Cleverly indicated significant reservations about the approach.

“My argument has always been that we need to modernise, update, and reform,” he said, adding that he fears some people “jump to their preferred solution and hang on to that really, really tightly and say this cannot be the right answer unless you do a particular thing.”

“I do not want to do anything that might undermine the key co-operation we have with countries [that] are very wedded to the ECHR for understandable reasons,” Mr. Cleverly said. “Nothing is cost free. Everything needs to be considered, the advantages and disadvantages.”

The home secretary said he’s frustrated that the government has “allowed the narrative to be created that this was the be all and end all” while the mission is to “stop the boats.”

“That’s the promise to the British people. Never lose sight of the mission. There are multiple methods. Don’t fixate on the methods. Focus on the mission,” he said.

Mr. Cleverly also said civil servants have “spent a lot of time” on fixing the Rwanda policy and “the Rwandans are very keen to work with us because we are helping them improve their institution.”

All European countries, apart from Russia and Belarus, are currently signatories of the ECHR, but Ms. Braverman has said the convention’s enforcer, the European Court of Human Rights, has become “politicised.”

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling last week,  Ms. Braverman said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Mr. Cleverly’s plan to tinker with the Rwanda policy won’t help flights take off before the next general election unless their emergency legislation blocks “the entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the [U.N.] refugee convention” with “clear ‘notwithstanding' clauses.”

A group of people thought to be migrants crossing the Channel in a small boat traveling from the coast of France and heading in the direction of Dover, Kent, on Aug. 29, 2023. PA Media

In September, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees rejected Ms. Braverman’s call for world politicians and thought leaders to consider reforms to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its interpretation.

Ms. Braverman said the interpretations adopted by “NGOs and others” including the UNHCR have enabled asylum seekers to shop around for safe countries they wish to settle in.

The UNHCR said 70 percent of the refugees remain in neighbouring countries and that there’s no need for reform or more restrictive interpretation.

Mr. Cleverly said he'd concentrate on doing things when asked about his predecessor’s description of illegal migration as a “hurricane” and an “invasion.”

“I’m not focused quite as much on describing it, I’m going to spend time dealing with it,” he told The Times of London. “Don’t talk tough, be tough. I am a player on the pitch. It’s not my job to try and think about creative ways of describing a situation. It is my job to deal with a situation.”

Questioned about plans reportedly pushed by immigration Robert Jenrick to cap the number of foreign care workers and raise the salary threshold for skilled work visas, Mr. Cleverly said he wouldn’t “rush to an answer” because he had “only inherited” the net migration figures “this morning.”

A revised estimate published by the ONS figures published on Thursday shows a record of 745,000 more people moved to the UK than those who moved away last year.

The Conservative government in 2019 has pledged to reduce migration, but the number has been running at record levels following a dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, partly because of ad-hoc humanitarian programs for the Ukrainians, hongkongers, and some Afghans, partly because of the liberalised regular immigration system.

Mr. Cleverly said the world has changed unexpectedly since the party made the manifesto commitment in 2019 and “we are dealing with the repercussions.”

The home secretary said the government needs to control and be seen to control immigration, but said he would do this “by work, by planning, and by professionalism rather than using hyperbolic phrases about these numbers.”