The British government and the home department are making serious efforts to stop illegal migrants crossing the English Channel, the UK home secretary said during her visit to a US-based think tank.

Speaking at a lecture organised by the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington DC, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman outlined her plans to tackle the migrant crisis and called for reforms.

In her speech, Ms Braverman called into question whether the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the foundation of modern asylum law, is still relevant, saying that simply being gay or a woman should not by itself be enough to qualify for protection under international refugee law.

Last year alone, tens of thousands of people crossed to the UK, despite legislation passed by both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak and the prime minister’s pledge to „stop the boats”.

Ms Braverman has previously signalled her discontent with the European Convention on Human Rights and its interpretation and the subsequent impact on policies like the government’s Rwanda deportation scheme.

Tests for how refugees are defined have changed, lowering the threshold for claiming asylum, the politician argued.

The convention was created to help resettle people fleeing persecution, following the horrors of World War Two, and was – initially at least – centred around Europe, the home secretary noted, adding that more than 70 years on, we now live in a completely different time. Citing an analysis by Nick Timothy and Karl Williams, she pointed out that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention now confers the notional right to move to another country upon at least 780 million people.

„The status quo, where people are able to travel through multiple safe countries, and even reside in safe countries for years, while they pick their preferred destination to claim asylum, is absurd and unsustainable,” the UK Home Secretary emphasized.