Kemi Badenoch exposes the laws and treaties holding Britain back

At a speech in London Kemi Badenoch announces a new major commission to investigate how the ECHR and other international agreements hold Britain back.

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You can read the full speech below: 

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The issue that has haunted me most this year has been the scandal of the grooming gangs.

I’ve sat and listened to the survivors tell me some of the most harrowing stories I’ve ever heard.

What many people don’t realise is what happened after. Foreign criminals, convicted of horrific abuse could not be deported.

They returned to the very neighbourhoods and streets where they committed their crimes.

Two of the Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders, Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf, fought deportation by claiming their "right to a family life" under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Rauf even gave up his Pakistani citizenship, just to make sure we couldn’t send him back.

He lost his appeals and yet, he's still here Still in Rochdale. Still living among the lives, he destroyed

Over and over again we hear of cases like this where the law is weak or just a mess.

Right now, we are turning into a country that protects criminals and ignores their victims.

That rewards cheats and punishes those who follow the rules.

That sees brave veterans endlessly pursued by the courts into their old age.

This can’t go on.

The ECHR is now being used in ways never intended by its original authors.

It should be a shield to protect, instead it’s become a sword.

A sword used to attack democratic decisions and common sense. This use of litigation as a political weapon is what I am calling lawfare.

It isn’t just damaging our security; it’s also damaging our prosperity.

Today is not just talking about the ECHR.  It is asking and answering a question – what are some of the things that the next Government will need to do? The things the British people expect it to be able to do and the very things that governments are struggling to do.

But time and time again when we try and find solutions, we come up with the same obstacles like the ECHR.

I know many believe that we should keep pursuing reform. I used to think so too. I fear this is now a lost cause.

Reform is not going to work.  And I mean that on many levels.

We tried that before. 15 years ago, the Brighton Process achieved some success, but the Strasbourg Court has shown no real interest in fundamental change.

Last month, nine European countries, led by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, called for a serious conversation about how the ECHR handles migration.

Not radical demands. Just a simple request to talk.

What was the Secretary General of the Council of Europe’s reply?

“Institutions that protect fundamental rights cannot bend to political cycles.”

In other words, they’re not listening.

In an interview last night, he seemed to backpedal but he’s also said that change will be ‘really complicated’. Let me translate that - nothing much will really change

A week ago, the Attorney-General stood in this building and compared Conservatives making the case for withdrawal to Nazis.

While he may have apologised, it’s quite clear this is what he believes.

This is the level of debate and analysis I have come to expect from this Labour government.

They chose not to support the case made by nine EU countries.

They have no interest in reforming the ECHR. They quite like the way things are.

I'm afraid we have four more years of a Labour government that isn’t interested in solving the problems governments should solve.

Like deciding who comes here and who stays.

How to make prison sentences fair.

How to protect our veterans from vexatious legal attacks.

Ensuring when it comes to social housing and public services that British citizens come first

And how to build infrastructure for the next generation quickly without the endless, vastly expensive legal challenges that means some things never get built at all?

Let’s start with the single biggest area where lawfare is destroying our country illegal immigration.

Just last Saturday, 1,200 illegal migrants arrived on small boats.

It's taking years, sometimes decades, to process these cases.

And your money will pay to look after people who have jumped the queue over law abiding immigrants and those genuinely in fear of persecution.

They'll be well looked after. They'll be put up in asylum hotels, forecast to cost taxpayers £15 billion over a decade.

Our country has lost control of the asylum system.

Hundreds of thousands of people have come here claiming to be refugees – far more than politicians before us ever imagined. Almost all passing through neighbouring countries which are perfectly safe.

Tens of thousands of them will receive taxpayer funded legal aid – which is spent on lawyers competing to devise ever more ingenious legal arguments to keep them in the country.

One woman, who was refused leave to remain, deliberately joined a terrorist organisation, to manufacture a claim that she risked imprisonment back home.

A convicted paedophile, evaded deportation by claiming he was gay, and his life would be at risk in his home country.

Every day we see these kind of cases reported – and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, mainly adult men, take the risk of crossing the Channel in small boats because they know we can’t even remove criminals and terrorists. Indeed, we’ll pay their legal fees to help them stay.

I will always defend the support we gave people from Hong Kong and Ukraine.

But we cannot become the destination for everyone looking for a new home or a better life.

Nor can we be the world’s softest touch. In some years, our approval rate for asylum applications was above 80%. Last year, Japan’s was 2%.

Britain is being mugged. Our asylum system is completely broken and will require a fundamental rebuild, so that the British government, not people traffickers control it.

That means a total end to asylum claims in this country by illegal immigrants and removing immediately all those who arrive illegally and try to claim asylum.

We need a new, sustainable system to admit strictly controlled numbers of those in genuine and actual need - with Parliament having the final say, not just on the rules, but the exact numbers coming in.

I have no qualms about saying this.

I come from an immigrant background, and I know that many people who have come to our country, or whose parents, grandparents and great, great, great grandparents came to this country, followed the rules and arrived legally. They were genuine asylum seekers. They were genuine economic migrants who waited in the queue. They are furious at being lumped in with those who break the rules.

The current free-for-all is bad for integration and bad for social cohesion. It is creating more racism and quite frankly I am tired of watching people break the rules and get away with it.

The previous Conservative government tried hard but failed to stop the boats.

The reasons why governments have struggled with these issues are very complex.

They are not because of any one particular set of laws or arrangements. It is far more than the ECHR.  The Refugee Convention has an impact, so does the European Convention Against Trafficking.

It is obvious to anyone who has looked at this that there is no silver bullet.

And every day the problem gets worse.  As the opposition, we have put forward tougher policies on illegal immigration.

A strict numerical cap on legal migration. Zero tolerance for foreign offenders. A Deportation Bill to remove those who should not be here.

And the more we build our policy programme, the clearer it seems that achieving our objectives means something needs to change.

I have always said that if we need to leave the Convention we should.

And having now considered the question closely.

I do believe that we will likely need to leave.

Because I am yet to see a clear and coherent way to fix this within our current legal structures.

But I won’t commit my Party to leaving the ECHR or other treaties without a clear plan to do so and without a full understanding of all the consequences.

We saw that holding a referendum without a plan to get Brexit done, led to years of wrangling and endless arguments until we got it sorted in 2019. We cannot go through that again.

I want us to fully understand and debate what the unintended consequences of that decision might be and understand what issues will still remain unresolved even if we leave.

It is very important for our country that we get this right.

We must look before we leap.

We must be sure of our footing and sure of where we will land.

We start from the position that Governments need to be able to make decisions for the public good.

And if the public don’t like those decisions.

They can vote for someone else.

That’s democracy.

We start from the position that governments need to be able to make the decision for the public good. And if the public don’t like those decisions, they can vote for someone else. That’s democracy

What we cannot have is a situation in which people want change and vote for change but lawfare stops governments from making that change.

This isn’t an accident. It’s thirty years of accepting a legal system re-engineered by Tony Blair.  And its reached a peak under this Government. Lawfare is also creating stupid decisions. Only a government led by a human rights lawyer, like the prime minister, could give away British territory in the Chagos islands pay £30 billion for the privilege and try to argue it’s a great victory.

How did we get in this mess? Bad laws passed in a rush. A legal culture that’s become more interested in political activism than public interest.

Charities and NGOs, who are often largely funded by taxpayers, suing the government, to get outcomes they could never secure at the ballot box.  Judges applying laws which politicians used to put nice-sounding targets into legislation, resulting in decisions that prevent governments delivering what they were elected to do. And in some cases, there are judges on Immigration Tribunals who appear – from public remarks they have made and from other work they engage in – to have personal views that make them seem not impartial.

This whole system needs change.

In October, I said Ministers need to be able to make decisions that aren’t endlessly challenged.

If the law says that the Government can’t deport a foreign national child abuser, then the law is an ass.

And it’s time for politicians to change it.

The rule of law is precious for Conservatives and that’s why I’m so determined to defend it, not see it abused or distorted through legal activism.

Britain has the best legal system in the world. People around the world trust our courts because of the quality of our judges and that’s why it is all the more important that the impartiality of every British judge is beyond reproach.

I’ve seen endless cases of the worst types of criminals – rapists, murderers, paedophiles – allowed to stay in Britain, deportation flights blocked, with the support of the current Prime Minister

Human rights laws re-interpreted in exactly the opposite way intended by those who originally wrote them.

But it's one thing to see those who break rules rewarded.

It’s another to see those who did the right thing punished. And I’m talking about veterans repeatedly harassed through the courts while terrorists walk free and use courts, those same courts, to sue the government.

Under a future conservative government this will stop. We are going to fix this.

Just before VE Day, I met a group of Chelsea pensioners.

They talked about their former colleagues, having to give evidence in old age and asked to recall in minute detail events that happened 40 years before or risk prison.

Morale is suffering and recruitment and retention are getting harder – just as we need to rebuild our military strength.

And it’s not just veterans, soldiers on operations face legal challenge too.

We cannot run the risk of our troops fighting a future war with one hand tied behind their backs.

We are going to fix this.

This is not what the architects of human rights law intended. They did not foresee mass migration, instant communication, or international criminal gangs exploiting these rights.

And over time, simple rights have been stretched and distorted. And it’s been turbocharged by the Blairite legal Settlement – by Labour’s Human Rights Act, which forces our courts not just to interpret UK law through the changing lens of Strasbourg’s living instrument but actually to change the meaning of some laws entirely.  It is Labour’s Equality Act that saw the preposterous situation of the Supreme Court having to explain to the government what a woman is.

This is mission creep - plain and simple. Lawfare is putting our national security, our armed forces, and our sovereignty at risk.

That’s why I’m launching the Lawfare Commission today.

Its job is simple. Get to the bottom of what’s going on and how we fix them with credible replacements.  We are going to have a plan for all the lawfare we believe is holding our country back whether it’s the Aarhus Convention or Judicial Review. But the first question has to be on the ECHR, and setting out a path to get us out, if that's what we decide to do.

We’re asking the hard questions that others won’t.

Getting the legal details right. We’re thinking of the consequences for all parts of our United Kingdom and how to protect all our human rights. Because that’s what a serious party does.

It would be absolutely unforgivable for a political party to say they’re going to leave the ECHR. And then to find that the boats don’t stop because they haven’t thought about other treaties in play such as the European Convention Against Trafficking, the Palermo Convention, or something else.

Although my whole shadow cabinet will be involved, these are legal questions.

So, I’ve asked Lord Wolfson KC, the shadow Attorney General, and Helen Grant, the shadow Solicitor General, to lead this work. They will be joined by some of the sharpest legal minds in the country. They will work fast. They will be forensic.

Because lawfare is bad for our security and it is bad for our prosperity.

I’ve set five simple tests.

These are the things that a Conservative government must be able to do:

One. The Deportation Test: Can we take back control of our asylum system?  So, Parliament — not international courts — decides who comes here and who stays. Can we lawfully remove foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to their home country or elsewhere — even if they have family here or claim they could be at risk if sent home?

Two. The Veterans Test: Can we stop our veterans being endlessly pursued by vexatious legal attacks? And can we make sure our military can fight a future war without one hand tied behind their backs?

Three. The Fairness Test: Can we put British citizens first when it comes to social housing and public services because we believe that charity begins at home and those who have paid in should come first, especially when resources are limited.

Four. The Justice Test: Can we make sure prison sentences actually reflect Parliament’s intentions? Can we stop the disruptive protests which block roads and emergency services without being told it’s ‘disproportionate.’

And finally, five. The Prosperity Test: Can we prevent courts pretending action on climate change is a human right? How can we make sure we can prevent endless legal challenges for our infrastructure projects so we can actually get things built and control our own planning system?

These are not Nazi demands as Lord Hermer might claim.

They are basic tests of whether we are still a sovereign nation able to make our own laws and govern ourselves.

If the Lawfare Commission makes clear that these tests cannot be passed under the current system, then this system must change.  If international treaties, including the European Convention block us and there is no realistic prospect of changing them then, we leave them. No hesitation. No apology.

But because it is clear that the ECHR is a major issue, I am not asking Lord Wolfson if we should leave that’s a political and not a legal question

I’m asking him to set out how we would leave and to consider what the intended consequences might be, not least in Northern Ireland.

If we decide to go down this route, we must do so knowingly.

At Conservative Party Conference we will report back on our conclusions.

And there will be more to come.

Britain is in the grip of two crises: a political crisis and an economic crisis.

Today, I have focused on the political crisis we face.

It is one of legitimacy of control, of believing that when we vote, it means something. That we are in charge of our destiny.

And even if things feel fine for some of us, we cannot ignore those who’ve been completely failed by the system — like the survivors of the grooming gang scandal — whose lives couldn’t feel further from our country's elites.

So, in the coming weeks, I am going to set out my views on both of these crises – the two

biggest questions which any future government has to answer.

I’m going to show you why stale answers from Labour and nonsense answers from

Reform, who do not do the homework, will fail.

I’ll also explain why much of what previous Conservative governments did, did not work either.

We got things wrong too. So much needs to change. So, I am changing the Conservative Party.

The only way to a brighter future is to fix these crises.  If we are to have a country that’s more united, more stable, more at ease with itself, then we need to restore real opportunity.

The ability of people to make something of their lives.

That is not true for many in the UK today and I'm afraid handing out more benefits to ourselves, or to foreign criminals, is not the answer to the problem.

Our country is not alone in facing these issues.

Italy, on the frontline of mass migration across the Mediterranean. They’re grappling with very much the same concerns.

Poland and the Baltic states are reappraising their treaty obligations in light of the threat from Russia.

Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania they’ve all raised concerns about the restraints placed on deportations.

It is clear that the time for major change is coming. We need to be ready.

The greatest danger is allowing lawfare to make this country – the mother of Parliaments – less fair, less safe, and less democratic.

We can do better than this.

Britain needs change. Real change. Not just words. Change.

We will protect our values, our democracy, our country, and our people.

No more excuses. No more delay.

It’s time to take back control – for real.

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