Plans for a "white list" of safe countries to be used to reject asylum claims have been branded "unacceptable" by Parliament's human rights watchdog.

MPs and peers on the joint committee on human rights said presuming countries were safe threatened to put human rights at risk.

We consider that a presumption of safety would present a serious risk that human rights would be inadequately protected

Human Rights Committee

Home Secretary David Blunkett has proposed that the 10 countries trying to join the European Union in 2004 should be on the list.

Peers will vote on the plans when the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill continues its report stage in the House of Lords on Thursday.

The "white list" idea was one of a number of changes to the bill introduced as it entered its final parliamentary stages.

Discrimination fears

People seeking asylum from countries on the list would be returned home within days if they could not prove it would put them in danger.

"White list" nations

Cyprus Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Malta Poland Slovak Republic Slovenia

In a report published on Wednesday, the human rights committee said there was widespread discrimination in some of the nations on the list, for example against Gypsies in the Czech and Slovak Republics.

"The presumption that a country is safe is of questionable validity," said the report.

The committee pointed to "well-authenticated threats" to human rights in the proposed "white list" countries.

"We consider that a presumption of safety, even if rebuttable, would present a serious risk that human rights would be inadequately protected," it said.

"We consider that the presumption of safety is unacceptable on human rights grounds."

The committee was also concerned that the home secretary could be allowed to put other countries on the list later.

And it warned that other parts of the plans, especially the danger that children could be separated from their families, could break European human rights laws.