Editorial: United Nations refugee policy has its origins in a very different era

​​The Home Secretary is expected to ask whether the UN Refugee Convention in 1951 should be reformed.

Suella Braverman will today address a think tank in Washington DC amid the refugee crisis.

It is not surprising that Europe and the United States and other rich countries are dealing with massive movements in population, and vast numbers of possible illegal entries, into their territories. The global wealth imbalance is obscene, and has been exacerbated by a massively growing population, particularly in Africa – the poorest continent.

There are great opportunities there, but immense problems too.

The question of refugees, thus, is a complex one. But just as Ms Braverman is right to be wary of the utterly dated 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which not only has thwarted the government's valid mandate to control our borders but has become a charter for terrorists, particularly in Northern Ireland, leading to a massive imbalance in legacy investigations, so too she is right to praise the UN Convention on Refugees, signed the following year, but to point out that it is of a different era.

A form of mania can take hold of opponents of immigration controls, as if any such rules or limits at all are cruelty. But Ms Braverman has cited analysis that the convention confers the right to move on perhaps 800 million people. Offering sanctuary to refugees is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society, but if such generosity is expanded to that extent it becomes meaningless and unsustainable.

There are problems for unionists though in any such reforms. Nationalist Ireland simply would not permit reform to, for example, ECHR. One day England will not let NI hold back reform. That means we could – again – be removed from rest of UK in a key branch of law and policy.