The plan to bar foreign sex offenders from claiming asylum is not “worth the paper its written on”, Suella Braverman has declared. The former Home Secretary warned perverts can still fight to stay in the UK using human right laws. Furious critics told Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that overseas criminals will just lodge more claims under Article 3 of the ECHR – which guarantees freedom from torture – because it supersedes the Refugee Convention.

Braverman said: “It's no coincidence that this announcement has been made a couple of days before the local elections, where Labour are struggling to maintain their support.

“And secondly, it's not worth the paper it's written on.

“If claimants and the foreign criminals are still able to bring human rights claims or claim protection under the European Convention of Human Rights, it will mean nothing whatsoever.

“The problem is that the human rights laws are so expansive, so accessible.

“Foreign criminals can get a lawyer paid for by the taxpayer on legal aid and they can put in claim after claim and appeal after appeal based on all sorts of different and often fabricated claims related to human rights.”

The Home Office will bar foreign sex offenders from being granted refugee status, paving the way for more of them to be deported.

It follows the scandal of Clapham chemical attacker Abdul Ezedi, who was granted asylum despite receiving a suspended sentence in 2018 for sexual assault and exposure.

He went on to throw alkaline into the face of his ex-partner and her two children, leading to a nationwide manhunt before his body was found in the River Thames.

Home Office insiders believe their decision to include all sex offences in the legal changes could lead to immigration judges concluding that perverts sentenced to less than 12 months behind bars should be deported because they are not “conducive to the public good”.

The UK previously only treated offences with sentences of more than 12 months as a “particularly serious crime”.

And critics warned the changes are unlikely to lead to an increase in deportations.

Sir Keir was told foreign sex offenders fighting deportation will become even more reliant on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Mrs Braverman added: “So even if there's going to be a limitation on some of their claims here or there, fundamentally no judge is going to disallow a foreign criminal from relying on Article Three of the European Convention of Human Rights, the right against torture, inhumane or degrading treatment, which has been distorted beyond all recognition.

“Ministers should have the power to make a decision, or those acting on behalf of ministers. But the problem is with Article Three, and the protection against torture is that it's now been stretched so much.

“So not only is this an unrealistic plan which won't survive contact with reality, which is our human rights laws, but the hypocrisy of the government, namely Keir Starmer, who has previously campaigned to stop the deportation of foreign criminals, is staggering.

“We also have an activist legal profession and an activist judiciary to a degree where we've seen constant cases of frankly left-wing immigration judges making ludicrous judgments on immigration claims.”