SIR KEIR STARMER vowed today to review legal human rights protections for torture victims in deportation cases, sparking outcry from refugee campaigners.

He claimed that ministers “need to look again” at how courts are interpreting some of the provisions under articles three and eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which ban torture and protect the right to private and family life respectively.

While “those genuinely fleeing persecution should be afforded asylum … we need to look again at the interpretation of some of these provisions,” the former human rights barrister told broadcasters.

Amnesty International UK chief executive Sacha Deshmukh said that the ban on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment was “absolute,” adding that “one of the most fundamental human rights protections … cannot be watered down or reinterpreted to suit political convenience.”

Care4Calais chief executive Steve Smith said: “Going from being a human rights lawyer to a human rights shredder would be the final stage in the Prime Minister’s makeover from humanitarian to authoritarian.

“As humans, we should all be concerned when a politician threatens to rip up human rights. Even more so when its driven by the vindictiveness of targetting survivors of torture. No-one is safe from a politician who can act with such callousness.”

Sir Keir also blamed the impact of Brexit, which Reform UK leader Nigel Farage long championed, for the surge in the number of dangerous Channel crossings.

“I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that, before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU,” he said.

“And he told the country it will make no difference if we left. Well, he was wrong about that.

“These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the Channel.”

Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “There’s no point in Labour rightly criticising Farage’s policies as racist one day and then adopting diluted versions of them the next.

“The majority of UK citizens want to see a compassionate and effective policy for people fleeing for their lives. That’s why PCS calls for safe routes for people seeking asylum and an end to the terrible risks to and losses of life in the Channel.”

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said that ministers could either “build a fair and compassionate asylum system … or we can water down laws that protect us all and risk chaos: desperate people would still arrive on our shores but be driven underground and left vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.”