LONDON: Britain will overhaul its approach to human rights laws to make it easier to deport migrants who arrive illegally, in a major shake-up of asylum policy to be set out on Monday, part of efforts to thwart the rise of the populist Reform UK party.
Interior minister Shabana Mahmood will outline changes to how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) should be interpreted by courts to give the government greater control over who can remain in Britain, and who must leave.
“These reforms will block endless appeals, stop last minute claims and scale up removals of those with no right to be here,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, said in a statement.
In what the government says is the most sweeping asylum policy overhaul of modern times, Mahmood will also announce plans to make refugee status temporary and to quadruple the length of time refugees will have to wait for permanent settlement in Britain.
The government also threatened visa bans on Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo unless those countries accepted the return of illegal migrants and criminals.
