Human rights lawyers fighting attempts to deport foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers are not to blame for Britain’s migration crisis, Keir Starmer has insisted.
The Prime Minister warned the “system would break down” if barristers allowed their political views to impact who they defend.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on Monday confirmed ministers are considering rewriting human rights laws amid rising fury over immigration tribunal decisions.
It follows a series of hugely controversial rulings where illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have exploited human rights laws to stay in the UK.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to introduce tough measures (Image: Getty)
More than 6,600 migrants have crossed the Channel this year (Image: Getty)
But former lawyer Sir Keir Starmer denied barristers are to blame for Britain’s immigration crisis.
He told reporters: “Lawyers are employed to represent people, and they represent them whether they agree with them or don’t agree with them.
“That’s been the system in place for pretty much the whole time we’ve had our current legal system. Every barrister subscribes to those rules.
“The system would break down if you didn’t have those rules, which would make a bad situation even worse.”
Calls have intensified for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights so that Britain can regain control of its borders.
It follows a series of hugely controversial decisions, including one where an Albanian criminal avoided deportation after claiming his son didn’t like foreign chicken nuggets and a Pakistani paedophile jailed for child sex offences who escaped removal from the UK as it would be “unduly harsh” on his children.
Some Labour MPs have urged ministers to set aside the ECHR and deport foreign criminals.
Ms Cooper said: “The review underway at the moment is looking at the application of Article 8 in particular cases where we have disagreed with the conclusions that were reached in the courts.
“That review is underway at the moment.
“We continue to abide by international law, and it’s worth saying that it is because we are part of the ECHR we’ve been able to get these further agreements with France and with Germany, including the agreement with Germany on them going after the warehouses where the boats are being stored, including strengthening our cooperation and sharing far more intelligence with France.”
The Prime Minister said he was “angry” about the scale of illegal migration as he convened a summit involving 40 countries to address the problem.
The start of 2025 has seen the highest number of people making small-boat crossings for the first three months of a year on record, but the Prime Minister insisted his approach to tackling the problem with international allies was starting to bear fruit.
Opening the summit at Lancaster House, he said: “Illegal migration is a massive driver of global insecurity. It undermines our ability to control who comes here, and that makes people angry.
“It makes me angry, frankly, because it’s unfair on ordinary working people who pay the price – from the cost of hotels, to our public services struggling under the strain.
“And it’s unfair on the illegal migrants themselves, because these are vulnerable people being ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs.”
Almost 30,000 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats since Sir Keir became Prime Minister, including 6,642 so far in 2025.
But Sir Keir highlighted figures showing that between July 5 and March 22 there were 24,103 returns – including 6,339 enforced returns of people with no legal right to be in the UK, 3,594 foreign national offenders and 6,781 asylum-related returns.
He also pointed to international criminal investigations involving UK authorities which were “beginning to bear fruit”, stressing his commitment to tackling people smuggling in the same way as cross-border terrorism.
But he blamed the Conservatives for failing to prevent people-smuggling gangs targeting the UK.
“We inherited this total fragmentation between our policing, our Border Force and our intelligence agencies.
“A fragmentation that made it crystal clear, when I looked at it, that there were gaps in our defence, an open invitation at our borders for the people smugglers to crack on. To be honest, it should have been fixed years ago.”
He said the Government’s Border Security Command would help address those gaps.
Countries including Albania, Vietnam and Iraq – from where migrants have travelled to the UK – were at the London talks, which are the first of their kind, alongside representatives from France, the US and China.
