A Labour MP has urged LGBTQ+ Conservatives to condemn Suella Braverman’s speech, in which she will say that Britain should not grant asylum to people who are simply fearful of persecution for being gay.
Ben Bradshaw, a former minister, made the call before a speech the home secretary is due to make in the US where she will make her case for the rewriting of key international refugee rules so they are “fit for the modern age”.
In a move to alter an agreement that undermined UK plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, the home secretary will argue that the United Nations 1951 refugee convention must be reformed to tackle a worldwide migration crisis.
She will argue that case law arising from the convention has lowered the threshold so that asylum seekers need only prove that they face “discrimination” instead of a real risk of torture, death or violence. As case law has developed, she will say, there has been “an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’, in favour of something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’”.
Speaking to the American Enterprise Institute, a rightwing thinktank in Washington DC, Braverman will say the change has expanded the number of those who may qualify for asylum to “unsustainable” levels, adding: “Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman.
“Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary. But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection,” she will add, in pre-briefed comments that have already drawn fire.
Bradshaw said on Twitter on Tuesday: “Any LGBT or other Tories prepared to condemn Braverman for this? She doesn’t seem to grasp that simply being gay is enough to result in persecution or death in many countries.”
Any LGBT or other Tories prepared to condemn Braverman for this? She doesn’t seem to grasp that simply being gay is enough to result in persecution or death in many countries https://t.co/WP2kk3D1a5
— Ben Bradshaw (@BenPBradshaw) September 26, 2023
The police minister, Chris Philp, told broadcasters on Tuesday morning that the UN’s refugee convention needs a rethink because people are using it to claim asylum on the basis of persecution they do not face.
He told Times Radio that some people were falsely claiming to be persecuted, saying “some people claim to be gay when they’re not”.
“When I was immigration minister I came across a number of cases when people had claimed to be gay, produced photographs of them and a sort of same-sex partner and it turned out on further investigation it was a sibling, it wasn’t a same-sex partner at all,” he added.
Later, Philp hesitated when asked on Sky News whether a gay Rwandan who had stowed away on a flight returning from that country to Britain would be able to claim asylum. “I would have to look at the specifics of the case,” he said.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said Braverman’s plans were seeking to undermine a belief in a shared humanity.
“A world where the UK and other western nations pull up the drawbridge and turn their backs on those who have been tortured, persecuted and faced terror because of their gender, sexuality or any other reason, is a world which turns its back on a belief in shared humanity and shared rights,” he said.
