European Court ‘Politically Motivated’ in Grounding UK-Rwanda Flight: Home Secretary

Home Secretary Priti Patel making a statement on the Rwanda asylum plan to MPs in the House of Commons, London, on June 15, 2022. PA Media

The European court was politically motivated in its decision to effectively ground Britain’s first flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda, according to the UK Home Secretary.

Priti Patel said the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision to grant a temporary injunction to ground the flight was described as “absolutely scandalous.”

“You’ve got to look at the motivation,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “How and why did they make that decision? Was it politically motivated? I’m of the view that it is, absolutely.”

“The opaque way this court has operated is absolutely scandalous. That needs to be questioned,” she said.

“We don’t know who the judges are, we don’t know who the panel are, we haven’t actually had a judgment—just a press release and a letter saying we can’t move this person under rule 39.”

“They’ve not used this ruling previously, which does make you question the motivation and the lack of transparency.”

In April Patel signed the deal that allowed for asylum seekers who had entered the UK illegally—usually involving crossing the English Channel on a human trafficker’s boat—to be sent to Rwanda and held there while their claims were processed.

Many charities and pressure groups, along with the Labour Party, and some Tory MPs, are opposed to the policy, with many claiming it could violate international law.

The government said all along that it expected a series of challenges in the courts.

Legal challenges to the legality of the policy itself will be processed in coming months.

However, refugee and asylum campaign groups asked judges in British courts to block the first flight—to effectively put the policy on pause—until challenges to the overall legality had been heard.

The British courts, including the High Court and Supreme Court, ruled in favour of the government, and the flight looked set to go ahead on Monday night—albeit with only seven people onboard, following various separate successful appeals for particular individuals.

Then, just moments before the flight was due to leave, the ECHR granted an urgent interim measure in regards to an Iraqi national who was due to be on the charter flight. It said the individual concerned should not be removed to Rwanda until three weeks after the delivery of the final domestic decision in his ongoing judicial review proceedings.

That ECHR decision meant that the other six people on the flight now had grounds for their removal orders to be scrapped, effectively grounding the flight and putting the policy on ice.

The last-ditch legal rulings sparked calls by some Tory MPs to pull Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights which the court rules on.

The government has not so far indicated any intention to withdraw, although senior figures have refused to rule out the possibility when asked in recent days.

Attorney General Suella Braverman told the BBC, “The government has been clear in the media aftermath of the ruling issued by the European Court of Human Rights that all options are on the table. So we’re not ruling anything in and we’re not ruling anything out.”

Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has suggested the UK will stay within the convention but new laws could ensure that interim measures from the Strasbourg court could effectively be ignored by the government.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly hit out at those bringing the legal challenges, accusing them of “abetting” criminal gangs.

PA Media contributed to this report