Suella Braverman has voted against the government’s latest attempt to reduce small boat crossings, arguing that no immigration law can work properly while Britain remains a member of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Reform UK MP for Fareham and Waterlooville opposed Labour’s Immigration and Asylum Bill at its second reading on Monday. The legislation passed comfortably by 264 votes to 90 and will now continue through Parliament.
Braverman later celebrated her decision on social media, declaring that the legislation was “not worth the paper it’s written on” and accusing Labour of failing to control Britain’s borders.
“Last night I voted against Labour’s new law to stop the boats,” she wrote.
“Why? Because it’s a farce and not worth the paper it’s written on.
“We need to leave the ECHR if we are serious about stopping illegal migration.
“Reform UK is the only party that can be trusted to do that.”
It is a familiar argument from Braverman, who has spent years demanding Britain withdraw from the ECHR and portraying the international agreement as the central obstacle preventing the removal of people without a right to remain in the country.
Her vote nevertheless exposes a contradiction at the heart of Reform’s approach. The party continually presents small boat crossings as an urgent national emergency, but when the government introduces legislation intended to strengthen deportation powers and reform the asylum system, Reform votes against it because it does not include withdrawal from the convention.
For critics, that raises a fairly obvious question: is Reform interested in supporting measures that could reduce crossings under the law as it currently stands, or will it reject everything short of its preferred battle with the ECHR?
What the Immigration and Asylum Bill would do
The new bill is considerably broader than a simple “stop the boats” law.
Among its provisions are measures intended to make it easier to deport foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes and to restrict the use of Article 8 of the ECHR, which protects the right to private and family life, in some immigration cases.
The government also wants to replace the existing asylum tribunal process with a new independent appeals body. Ministers argue this would allow cases to be resolved more quickly and prevent people from remaining in Britain for years while repeated legal challenges are considered.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has added a measure intended to remove deportation protections from certain long-term Commonwealth residents convicted of the most serious offences. That change followed controversy over the government’s inability to deport Shabir Ahmed, the convicted leader of a Rochdale grooming gang.
The legislation also proposes significant changes to the wider asylum system, including expanding safe and legal routes through community sponsorship. Other measures would make refugee status temporary and increase the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain.
Parts of the bill have attracted strong criticism from refugee organisations and Labour MPs on the left, who argue that it risks punishing vulnerable people and reducing independent oversight of Home Office decisions.
Fourteen Labour MPs voted against it, including John McDonnell, Nadia Whittome and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Their objection, however, came from the opposite direction to Braverman’s. They believe the legislation is already too punitive, while Reform and the Conservatives insist it does not go far enough.
The bill is therefore not beyond criticism, but Braverman’s description of it as merely a worthless piece of paper ignores the substantial changes it would make.
Braverman’s record in government
Braverman used her Commons speech to accuse Labour of having “failed to smash the gangs and stop the boats”. Her remarks prompted laughter from MPs on the opposite benches, largely because she was a senior member of the Conservative governments that repeatedly promised to solve the same problem.
She served as home secretary under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, holding direct responsibility for the immigration system before being dismissed in November 2023.
During that period, Braverman became one of the loudest supporters of the Rwanda deportation plan. The policy was announced by Boris Johnson’s government in 2022 and was supposed to deter people from attempting Channel crossings by sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
It never resulted in the removal of an asylum seeker before Labour scrapped it after taking office. The scheme cost hundreds of millions of pounds and became trapped in legal challenges, including a Supreme Court ruling that Rwanda could not be treated as a safe country under the arrangements then in place.
Braverman now argues that leaving the ECHR is the only credible solution. It is a position that fits neatly with Reform’s wider campaign, but it also allows her to avoid explaining why the government in which she served did not stop the crossings.
The record annual total was set in 2022, when approximately 46,000 people made the journey. That was during a Conservative government, with Braverman serving as home secretary for part of the year.
Small boat crossings are falling this year
Braverman’s claim that Labour has simply failed also leaves out the most recent figures.
Home Office data shows that 11,884 people arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel during the first six months of 2026. That was 41 per cent lower than the 19,982 recorded over the same period in 2025 and 12 per cent below the equivalent figure for 2024.
June produced the lowest number of arrivals for that month since 2021.
The decline does not mean the problem has been solved. More than 12,000 people have still made the dangerous journey this year, and the average number placed aboard each boat has increased. Smuggling networks appear to be packing more people into unsuitable vessels, placing lives at even greater risk.
Crossing totals can also fluctuate because of weather conditions and changing migration routes across Europe. It would therefore be premature for the government to claim that every part of the reduction is the direct result of its policies.
Even so, a fall of 41 per cent is significant, particularly when Reform repeatedly speaks as though crossings are simply rising without interruption.
Labour has increased cooperation with France and signed a three-year agreement worth £662 million to support enforcement along the French coast. The government says its work with European authorities has disrupted the supply of boats and engines used by smuggling gangs.
The National Crime Agency has also targeted criminal networks involved in arranging journeys, while new offences have been introduced to prosecute people who pilot the boats.
Braverman may believe those measures are inadequate, but claiming nothing short of leaving the ECHR can make any difference is difficult to square with the fall already recorded this year.
Would leaving the ECHR stop the boats?
Reform regularly presents withdrawal from the ECHR as though it would immediately allow the government to prevent crossings.
The reality is less straightforward.
Leaving the convention could make it harder for individuals to use ECHR rights when challenging removal, but it would not physically prevent boats from leaving the French coast. Britain would still need cooperation from France and other European countries to disrupt smuggling networks before vessels enter the Channel.
The government would also remain bound by other legal obligations, including the Refugee Convention and domestic laws concerning asylum, trafficking and modern slavery, unless it chose to abandon or rewrite those protections as well.
There would be consequences beyond immigration. The ECHR safeguards rights including freedom of expression, protection from torture, access to a fair trial and respect for private and family life. Those protections apply to everybody within the jurisdiction, not only asylum seekers.
Britain played a central role in drafting the convention after the Second World War. Leaving it would also create serious difficulties for the Good Friday Agreement, which incorporates convention rights into the peace settlement in Northern Ireland.
Reform argues that the Human Rights Act could be replaced with a British Bill of Rights. Critics fear the real objective is to weaken the ability of courts to restrain government power.
That concern was captured by one social media user responding to Braverman’s vote.
For Reform, they argued, the migrant crisis was not a problem to be solved but “the permanent emergency they need to justify tearing up human rights protections so power faces no checks”.
“The boats are just the battering ram,” they added. “Your rights are the target.”
Reform benefits from keeping immigration in crisis
There is no way to prove that Braverman or Reform actively wants small boat crossings to continue. They would strongly reject the suggestion, and their public position is that Labour’s legislation will fail.
It is nevertheless true that Reform has built much of its political appeal around the claim that Britain has lost control of its borders. Immigration provides the party with one of its most effective campaign messages and a constant means of attacking both Labour and the Conservatives.
That creates an obvious political incentive to dismiss any evidence of improvement.
If crossings fall, Reform can claim the reduction is temporary. If the government introduces new enforcement powers, the party can declare them useless. Unless ministers adopt Reform’s entire programme, including withdrawal from the ECHR, nothing can ever be recognised as progress.
Braverman’s vote fits that pattern. She opposed a bill designed to accelerate removals and restrict the use of human rights arguments in immigration cases because it did not go as far as she wanted.
She is entitled to believe the legislation is insufficient. Opposition parties regularly vote against bills they consider ineffective, even when they support the general objective.
The revealing part is the insistence that Reform alone can be trusted to stop the boats, when its MPs have just voted against measures intended to do precisely that.
Labour still has much to prove. The legislation may fail, the recent decline in crossings may not continue and some of the bill’s provisions could create serious injustices.
But if Reform refuses to support any practical measure until Britain abandons an international human rights agreement, people are entitled to ask whether stopping the boats is really the immediate priority.
Without a permanent crisis, after all, Reform would have rather less to shout about.
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