Home secretary to announce a drastic tightening of rules, including requiring asylum seekers to wait 20 years before getting the right to permanently settle in UK

In her statement to MPs this afternoon Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is due to set out further details of her proposals to legislate to limit the extent to which courts can use article 3 (protection from torture) and article 8 (right to a family life) of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) to restrict removals.

In an interview on the Today programme, Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP and immigration law KC, explained his opposition to Mahmood’s plans. He is particulaly opposed to the idea that people told they can stay in the UK because they are at risk in their home country should have their asylum status continually reviewed.

The numbers of people who are prevented from return by the Strasbourg court are very, very small.

And we need to be realistic about what those sorts of reforms are going to achieve. We can’t promise the public things which it’s not going to deliver.

The countries that we’ve started with are the ones that we’ve named. We wouldn’t rule it out with anybody else.

The reality is, with most countries, we’ve got much better relationships. We need to see these agreements work, and we’re not going to rule anything out in order to make they do.

This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.