Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said he will scrap the plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda regardless of what the court says.
Asked whether he will reverse the policy if the Supreme Court rules that it’s lawful and if people smuggling across the English Channel declines, Sir Keir Starmer said he will and insisted the plan is expensive and unworkable.
In a BBC interview in Liverpool ahead of the Labour conference, Sir Keir was asked if he would terminate the plans even if the judges approve it and small boat crossings then decline.
“Yes. I think it’s the wrong policy, it’s hugely expensive,” he told the BBC’s “Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg” programme. “It’s a tiny number of individuals who would go to Rwanda, and the real problem is at [the] source.”
Pressed again on whether he would change his stance if the deportation plan deters Channel crossing and results in fewer drownings, Sir Keir rejected the premise that the policy would work.
“You’re putting this to me on the basis that it’s working,” he said, asserting that the government’s promise that the scheme will reduce Channel crossings “hasn’t happened.”
Instead of attempting to reduce the demand for people smuggling, Sir Keir said the practice would “only stop if we smash the criminal gangs who are running this vile trade.”
Senior Conservatives seized on the comments, with party chairman Greg Hands arguing Sir Keir “failed to give another option” to the Rwanda policy.
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick said: “Proof, if it were needed, that Labour don’t even want to stop the boats.
£140 million Already Spent
Under the government’s plan, most of those who enter the UK via unauthorised routes, including asylum seekers, will be put on a one-way flight to Rwanda where their claims will be processed and where they will be given opportunities to settle down.Unaccompanied minors and those who can prove Rwanda is not safe for them will be exempt.
The UK has already paid Rwanda £140 million under its asylum partnership announced in April last year, but the plan is yet to take flight after the European Court of Human Rights emptied the first plane.
In June, Court of Appeal judges overturned an earlier High Court ruling which found Rwanda could be considered a “safe third country,” disrupting the key plan in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s strategy to stop the boats.
They indicated that nearly two-in-five people would need to be deterred from crossing the Channel in small boats for the policies set out in the Illegal Migration Bill to break even.
Research from the Refugee Council, which opposes the policy, has suggested that three-quarters of people who crossed the Channel in small boats this year would be recognised as refugees if their applications had been processed.
Since 2020, most of the UK’s illegal immigrants came on small boats from France. British Ministers have argued that there’s no need for any of them to cross the Channel from a safe country.
The Home Secretary recently hit out at “NGOs and others including the U.N. refugee agency” for the liberal interpretation of the Refugee Convention, saying it led to asylum seekers being able to “travel through multiple safe countries and even reside in safe countries for years while they pick and choose their preferred destination to claim asylum.”
The number of small boat arrivals this year has remained higher than those during the same periods in 2020 and 2021, but the crossings have slowed compared to last year.
By Oct. 7, some 25,300 people had been detected reaching British shores on small boats.
He previously said he plans to tackle illegal immigration by going after smuggling gangs by seeking to expand counter-terror style powers to freeze their assets and ban them from travelling.
