Sir Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper must order a “radical overhaul” of human rights laws following a slew of controversial immigration cases, critics have declared.
Home Office officials are examining how judges are applying the rights to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Daily Express can confirm.
A number of cases will be selected and examined for loopholes, it is understood.
This will identify how some human rights lawyers and migrants abuse the law to avoid deportation.
While the work is in its “early stages”, ministers have been warned “too many” foreign criminals have been allowed to stay for reasons that “defy common sense”.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Daily Express: “These ever-expanding definitions have in effect created new law which, as matters stand, Parliament cannot correct.
“My view is that this has all gone too far and a radical overhaul of the human rights framework, including the operation of the ECHR, is urgently needed.
“There have been too many cases where dangerous foreign criminals and people in the UK illegally have been allowed to stay for reasons which Parliament never legislated and which obviously defy common sense.”
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick told the Daily Express: “After years of mudslinging, Yvette Cooper now concedes the ECHR prevents us controlling our borders.
“But this is pathetic posturing from a Home Secretary allergic to border controls.
“And as long as the Attorney General – with his rigid adherence to international laws – remains in post, nothing will change.”
A Home Office source told the Daily Express: “It’s important that the law is upheld in a fair and proportionate way. We are looking at the application of Article 8 to ensure it is being applied as intended. This work is in its early stages.”
The review comes after numerous highly controversial immigration rulings, including one where an Albanian criminal avoided deportation after claiming his son did not 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.
And a Cuban woman, Ilian Velazquez, was allowed to move to the UK to join her boyfriend in the UK despite the fact that he had died the previous year.
Velazquez met her new partner, Galan Zambo, a dual South African and Hungarian national, after her two applications to stay in the UK failed.
She applied for leave to remain as his partner, but this was refused.
The couple then claimed deporting Velazquez to Cuba would breach their Article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights
The judge refused this bid, but told them they could make a fresh claim if they had evidence of “unsurmountable obstacles” to them living together in Cuba.
On Tuesday, Britain’s top judge, Baroness Sue Carr, condemned the Prime Minister and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch for discussing the case of a Palestinian family who applied to come to the UK on a scheme designed for Ukrainian refugees.
They applied for entry to the UK using the Ukraine Family Scheme to join the father’s brother, who has lived in the UK since 2007 and is a British citizen.
But this was refused in May last year after the Home Office concluded the requirements of the scheme had not been met.
The family’s claim was initially rejected by an immigration tribunal on the grounds it was outside the Ukraine programme’s rules.
An upper tribunal judge then allowed the family to come to the UK on the basis of their right to a family life under article 8 of the European convention on human rights (ECHR).
He said the youngest children, now seven and nine, were “at a high risk of death or serious injury on a daily basis” and that it was “overwhelmingly” in their best interests to be in a safer environment with their parents and siblings.
Responding to Mr Jenrick’s criticisms, a Labour source said: “The Tories lost control of our borders, allowing criminal smuggling gangs to take hold and removals of those with no right to be here to collapse.
“The day we take lessons from Robert Jenrick on border security will be a very sad day indeed.
“He was a Home Office minister in 2022, when small boat crossings hit record levels.”