The idea that mass migration poses risks to the United Kingdom is a “creation”, and Britons should not demonise migration, the new head of the government’s unelected equality watchdog has said.
The leader of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), one of the massive proliferation of Blair-era ‘quango’ (quasi-non-governmental organisation) bodies created to take power away from the democratically elected parliament and invest it in entrenched arms-length bodies permanently staffed by ideological fellow-travellers, has warned Britons against considering leaving the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), reports The Daily Telegraph .
Accusing discussions around migration and border control of being dishonest, Mary-Ann Stephenson said “this idea that migration causes huge risks for the country” is “created”.
Stephenson, the newly-installed chairman of the EHRC — the UK’s human rights ‘regulator’ — has said in her first major interjection since taking office that opposition to the European Union’s ECHR is merely based on “misleading” stories about court cases.
While Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has vowed to withdraw from the organisation should it form a future government, allowing the UK to control its own borders and decisions on deportation without asking Europe for permission, Stephenson said that would be a “mistake”.
Making tacit that she considers critics of mass migration to be dishonest, the quango boss is reported to have said : “I think it’s really important that we have honesty in the way that we talk about human rights, and that we also have a recognition that the demonisation of migrants, the creating this idea that migration causes huge risks for the country can make the lives not just of migrants to the UK, but of ethnic minority UK citizens, very, very difficult”.
Nigel Farage responded to the remarks, stating simply: “Reform believes we should deport terrorists, rapists and serious foreign criminals. The vast majority will agree with me that we must prioritise the rights of British people, whatever their ethnicity”.
The Guardian notes the Conservative Party, which failed to take Britain out of the ECHR when Britain left the rest of the European Union, but which has now, when out of power, woken up to the issue, called Stephenson’s comments “a disgrace”. Spokesman Chris Philp is reported to have decried the comments as a bid to denigrate people with concerns about mass migration as “racist”.
Philp said: “This nonsense has to end. It is completely wrong that Labour’s new human rights chief dismisses legitimate concerns about mass migration and crimes committed by foreign nationals – including the recent spate of rapes and sex attacks committed by small boat illegal immigrants”.
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