Immigration Under Labour: Scrapping the Rwanda Plan and Sticking With the ECHR

Labour Party Leader Sir Keir Starmer launches his party's manifesto while on the General Election campaign trail at Co-op HQ in Manchester, England, on June 13, 2024. Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

A Labour government would scrap the Rwanda plan, introduce a Border Security Command to tackle people smuggling, and ensure the UK would “unequivocally” remain part of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

These are the pledges that Sir Keir Starmer has made ahead of the July 4 General Election, where immigration has become a policy focus for most parties in the race.

The Conservatives have overseen record-high legal immigration and more than 125,000 people illegally cross the English Channel in the past six years. As a consequence, the government introduced laws, policies, and international deals to attempt to take back control of Britain’s borders. The party maintains that their systems will work.

Labour, meanwhile, has sought to challenge the Conservatives’ claims that it is soft on immigration by presenting itself as the party with plans to control and manage the border, establishing an ordered immigration strategy linked to skills, bringing an end to the “chaos” caused by the previous government.

Scrapping Rwanda

Launched by party leader Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday, the manifesto says a Labour government would create “strong” and “secure” borders, pledging in print what he had been stating for months: that he would scrap the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan and its “unworkable laws” which have created “a ‘perma-backlog’ of tens of thousands of asylum seekers, who are indefinitely staying in hotels costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every week.”

“Their flagship policy—to fly a tiny number of asylum seekers to Rwanda—has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Even if it got off the ground, this scheme can only address fewer than one per cent of the asylum seekers arriving. It cannot work,” the manifesto says.

The government’s scheme has come under criticism in recent months, including from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee which said that the Home Office has “no credible plan” for sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda, and that the multi-million-pound endeavour has had “little to show for the money spent so far.”

Conservatives have defended their scheme, which since it was launched has been expanded to include failed asylum seekers, saying they have established a “deterrent” to people illegally coming to the UK by crossing the English Channel.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had made stopping the illegal boat crossings one of his major policy pledges during his premiership. The Safety of Rwanda Act—finally passed into law in April—coupled with the Illegal Migration Act forms part of the Rwanda plan, would see asylum seekers who arrive in the country illegally sent to Rwanda.

The Conservatives said in their manifesto, which was launched on Tuesday, that their next government would “run a relentless, continual process of permanently removing illegal migrants to Rwanda with a regular rhythm of flights every month, starting this July.”

Labour has said that it would “restore order to the asylum system,” hiring additional caseworkers to clear the backlog of asylum seekers, after the party had indicated that it would allow those earmarked by the Conservatives for removal to Rwanda to be apply for asylum.

The party also said it would create a new “returns and enforcement unit” with an additional 1,000 staff to “fast track removals to safe countries for people who do not have the right to stay here.”

New Border Security Command

Labour’s flagship proposal to tackle illegal migration and replace the Rwanda strategy is its new Border Security Command—measures that the party had already revealed in May.

This multi-agency unit, involving hundreds of new investigators, intelligence personnel, and cross-border police officers, will “be supported by new counter-terrorism style powers, to pursue, disrupt, and arrest” criminal people smuggling gangs “who trade in driving this crisis.”

Labour says this new agency will be funded by ending the “wasteful” Migration and Economic Development Partnership—a scheme that comprises part of the Rwanda plan, which provides support to the African country in the form of investments for development projects and aid to those the UK relocates there.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak launches the Conservative Party general election manifesto at Silverstone, England on June 11, 2024. James Manning/PA Wire

A key mechanism of this Border Security Command would be a “new security agreement” with the EU “to ensure access to real-time intelligence” and would enable EU and British policing teams to engage in joint investigations to stop the criminal cross-border trade in people.

This is a strategy quite familiar to the Conservative Party, which when leading the last government fostered a very similar partnership with the EU’s border agency Frontex, including collaborations on training, joint operations, and the exchange of intelligence.

Like the Conservatives, Labour said it would “negotiate additional returns arrangements” to speed up returning failed asylum seekers as well as “increase the number of safe countries that failed asylum seekers can swiftly be sent back to.”

‘Reduce’ Net Migration

When immigration figures were released last month and showed that net migration had fallen 10 percent—from a record high—the Conservatives had hailed it as a sign that their measures to limit legal immigration were working.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper criticised the government for figures she said were still too high, saying they were a sign of a “failure” of the Tories “as net migration has more than trebled since Rishi Sunak and his party promised to get it down at the last election.”

In its manifesto, Labour has vowed to “reduce net migration”—however, have stopped short of setting a target, or detailing how this could be achieved.

The Conservatives featured in their plans published on Tuesday that it would “introduce a binding, legal cap” on immigration which will “fall every year of the next parliament.”

Border Force check the passports of passengers arriving at Gatwick Airport near London on May 28, 2014. Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Likewise, they did not set a figure for this cap, pledging instead that it would be “set at a level that explicitly takes into account the costs and the benefits of migration.” The Tories added that the cap will be subject to an annual vote in parliament, “so that the British people can have confidence that immigration numbers will be controlled.”

Labour has said that their approach to managing immigration would be tied to skills policy. Criticising the Conservatives for having become “overly dependent on workers from abroad to fill skills shortages,” the manifesto said that immigration to address skills shortages will trigger “a plan to upskill workers and improve working conditions in the UK.”

“We will end the long-term reliance on overseas workers in some parts of the economy by bringing in workforce and training plans for sectors such as health and social care, and construction,” the plans say.

Backing the ECHR

The last government had not managed to send any illegal immigrants to Rwanda who had not gone voluntarily. Initial attempts in June 2022 were thwarted by the EHCR, when the Strasbourg court issued Rule 39, which can be used to temporarily halt the removal of asylum seekers.

Despite the passing of other UK legislation to aid the scheme and the ECHR amending Rule 39, some backbenchers still feared that international courts could stop flights taking off.

While not explicitly saying a Conservative government could take the UK out of the ECHR, Mr. Sunak’s manifesto states, “If we are forced between our security and the jurisdiction of a foreign court, including the ECtHR, we will always choose our security.”

A group of people thought to be illegal immigrants are brought into Dungeness, Kent, from the RNLI Dungeness Lifeboat, following a small boat incident in the Channel, on April 27, 2023. Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

Instead, the Conservatives have said it would take a global approach to dealing with mass illegal immigration and asylum, announcing that a prospective Tory government would hold an international summit to “reform international laws to make them fit for an age of mass migration.”

“We will restrict visa access from countries that don’t work with us on our national priorities, like illegal migration,” the party pledged.

Labour, for its part, explicitly rules out leaving the Strasbourg court, saying in its manifesto, “Britain will unequivocally remain a member of the European convention on Human Rights.”