Western Civilisation ‘Broken’: Illegal Migrants Criminals Exploit Human Rights Convention to Avoid Deportation

At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, Conservative leader Cami Badenoch said that Western civilisation has been ‘broken’ in recent decades due to ‘loopholes in liberalism’, including the ECHR. In particular, the ‘chicken nuggets’ immigration case shows how migrants use the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to avoid deportation.

Speaking on Monday, Ms Badenoch said: ‘The current system is being abused. The public is outraged that the UK has become a safe haven for foreign criminals. The most astonishing example is how the European Convention on Human Rights, designed to stop state persecution of individuals, is now being used as a weapon by those who want to undermine our national identity and border security.’

She added: ‘One case involved a man who was allowed to stay because it was claimed that his son did not like foreign chicken nuggets. In another case, a drug dealer allegedly avoided deportation because of his daughter's gender identity issues.’ 

‘We've been members of this convention for half a century without this madness. What has changed? It's not about values. It's about people. They are afraid of creating any conflict. They are using the latest and greatest interpretations of human rights law to avoid it,’ Badenoch said.

Her comments come after The Telegraph exposed numerous cases of illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals using human rights laws to stay in the UK or stop their deportation.

These included an Albanian criminal who avoided deportation after claiming his son had an aversion to foreign chicken nuggets and a Pakistani paedophile who was jailed for child sex offences but avoided deportation from the UK because it would have been ‘unnecessarily cruel’ to his own children.

There are a record 34,169 pending immigration appeals, mostly related to human rights abuses, which threaten to hamper Labour's efforts to speed up the removal of illegal migrants.

Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to close a loophole that allowed a family from Gaza to enter the UK illegally after applying under the Ukrainian refugee scheme.