The British government will try to revive the British Bill of Rights as a weapon in its arsenal to tackle record number of migrants landing on England’s south coast, deputy prime minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday
Mr Raab, who is also justice secretary, said the legislation would give the UK courts supremacy over the European Court of Human Rights which was responsible for blocking the first deportation flights to Rwanda.
Almost 40,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the UK this year via the dangerous English Channel route using often unseaworthy boats to try to traverse one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
How the government handles the crisis is a political priority for the ruling Conservatives who were elected on a promise of being tough on immigration and Brexit.
Mr Raab, who championed the legislation before he was sacked by Liz Truss during her brief premiership, said it will return to Parliament “in the coming weeks”.
“It builds on the UK's proud tradition of liberty by strengthening freedom of speech, reinjecting a healthy dose of common sense to the system and ending abuse of our laws,” Mr Raab said.
“It will put an end to the mission creep of continuously expanding human rights laws, and re-establish proper democratic oversight from Parliament.
“It will make crystal clear that the UK Supreme Court is not subordinate to the European Court of Human Rights.”
When it was first introduced under then-prime minister Boris Johnson, ministers said it would prevent judges in the Strasbourg court from interfering in the government's controversial policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed.
However, the bill was shelved by Ms Truss in September after being told it was “unlikely to progress in its current form”.
Nevertheless, the Bill of Rights is unlikely to provide a quick fix as it is also highly controversial and the government is likely to face a tough battle — particularly in the House of Lords — to get it on to the statute book.
So far the Rwanda deportation flights — a policy the government says is a deterrent to criminal traffickers and the trafficked people — have not taken off because of intervention from the European court in Strasbourg.
Ministers are under intense pressure to deal with the migrant crisis after the disclosure of dangerously overcrowded conditions at a processing centre at Manston in Kent.
Conditions at Manston have left the UK’s immigration watchdog “speechless”. Concerns were further heightened at the weekend when petrol bombs were thrown at the Dover migrant centre.
Dover, just 33 kilometres from France at the channel’s narrowest point, is the focal point of British processing of asylum seekers.
There were 299 people who made the journey in 2018. The next year, 1,843 crossings were recorded, followed by 8,466 in 2020 and 28,526 last year.
The government has tried increasing naval patrols, asking France to step up land operations and the Rwanda deportation policy to discourage people from attempting the trip.
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Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Women & Power: A Manifesto
Mary Beard
Profile Books and London Review of Books
Desert Warrior
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Rating: 3/5
Armies of Sand
By Kenneth Pollack (Oxford University Press)
Slow loris biog
From: Lonely Loris is a Sunda slow loris, one of nine species of the animal native to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore
Status: Critically endangered, and listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list due to growing demand in the global exotic pet trade. It is one of the most popular primate species found at Indonesian pet markets
Likes: Sleeping, which they do for up to 18 hours a day. When they are awake, they like to eat fruit, insects, small birds and reptiles and some types of vegetation
Dislikes: Sunlight. Being a nocturnal animal, the slow loris wakes around sunset and is active throughout the night
Superpowers: His dangerous elbows. The slow loris’s doe eyes may make it look cute, but it is also deadly. The only known venomous primate, it hisses and clasps its paws and can produce a venom from its elbow that can cause anaphylactic shock and even death in humans
UK’s AI plan
- AI ambassadors such as MIT economist Simon Johnson, Monzo cofounder Tom Blomfield and Google DeepMind’s Raia Hadsell
- £10bn AI growth zone in South Wales to create 5,000 jobs
- £100m of government support for startups building AI hardware products
- £250m to train new AI models
