Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have promised harsher treatment for migrants and an expansion of the scheme to remove refugees to Rwanda as they prepare to meet in a televised debate on Monday night. The hour-long debate at 9pm on BBC One will be the first since MPs selected Mr Sunak and Ms Truss to go forward to a ballot of the entire Conservative party membership that will decide who should succeed Boris Johnson as party leader and prime minister.
Mr Sunak, who is trailing by double digits in polls of party members, said he would allow Parliament to set a cap on the number of refugees who could be accepted into Britain each year. Asylum seekers would no longer be housed in hotels but on cruise ships and Britain would change its definition of who qualifies for asylum, rejecting the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) interpretation in favour of a narrower one in the 1951 Refugee Convention.
“Our immigration system is broken and we have to be honest about that. Whether you believe that migration should be high or low, we can all agree that it should be legal and controlled,” Mr Sunak said.
“Right now the system is chaotic, with law-abiding citizens seeing boats full of illegal immigrants coming from the safe country of France with our sailors and coastguards seemingly powerless to stop them. It must stop and if I am prime minister I will stop it. With a series of concrete measures that are reasonable, fair and proportionate including tightening the definition of who qualifies for asylum and setting up a new Small Boats Taskforce to protect those being exploited by criminal gangs and end the scourge of illegal migration.”
[ Opinion: Next British PM really can ‘take back control’, in more ways than oneOpens in new window ]
Both candidates support the removal of refugees arriving in Britain across the Channel from France to Rwanda, where they would remain if their asylum applications are successful and would not be allowed to return to Britain. Ms Truss said she would expand the scheme to other countries in Africa, adding that she would not “cower to” the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg which halted the first refugee flights to Rwanda.
“I am determined to see the Rwanda policy through to full implementation as well as exploring other countries where we can work on similar partnerships. I’ll make sure we have the right levels of force and protection at our borders. I will not cower to the ECHR and its continued efforts to try and control immigration policy,” she said.
Ms Truss’s campaign dismissed Mr Sunak’s proposals as impractical and ineffective and suggested that his plan to imprison migrants indefinitely on floating cruise ships in Britain could be illegal under the Human Rights Act and the ECHR. Charities dealing with migration also expressed scepticism, questioning how Mr Sunak’s proposed cap on refugee numbers could work.
Monday night’s BBC debate will be followed by a debate on Tuesday hosted by Talk TV and the Sun newspaper and the first of 12 official hustings will take place on Thursday evening in Leeds.
