Former home secretary criticises PM’s Rwanda asylum bill saying it should ‘totally exclude international law’
With so much happening today, I’ll be covering the crisis in the Conservative party, and other Westminster political stories, here. And my colleague Jamie Grierson will be covering Boris Johnson at the Covid inquiry on a separate live blog here.
Here are the main lines from Suella Braverman’s interview on the Today programme.
Braverman, the former home secretary, claimed that she was not actively plotting to bring down Rishi Sunak as Tory leader and she claimed she hoped he would lead the party into the next election. (See 9.14am.) She said:
I want the prime minister to succeed in stopping the boats. He said he would do whatever it takes. I’m telling him there is a way to succeed in stopping the boats and fulfilling that promise.
If we do it, if he does it as prime minister, he will be able to lead us into the next election telling the people we have succeeded on this very important pledge.
She rejected claims the Conservative party had a “death wish”.
She said the Rwanda bill published yesterday would not work. She explained:
There are elements that should be welcomed in this new bill that the prime minister has presented.
But taken as a whole and looking at the reality of the challenges that are involved in detaining people, removing people and getting them to Rwanda – this is a very litigious field and there are lots of legal frameworks that apply – the reality is and the sorry truth is that it won’t work and it will not stop the boats.
She said the bill needed to be change “to totally exclude international law – the Refugee Convention, other broader avenues of legal challenge”.
She defended her habit of making controversial and provacative statements. She said:
The truth is that when I served as home secretary I sought to be honest: honest to the British people, honest for the British people and sometimes honesty is uncomfortable.
But I’m not going to shy away from telling people how it is and from plain speaking, and if that upsets polite society then I’m sorry about that.
