Sunak Defends Rwanda Migration Bill as Immigration Minister Resigns

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a press conference in the Downing Street Briefing Room, London, on Dec. 7, 2023. James Manning/PA Wire

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has defended the government’s draft emergency bill on Rwanda on Thursday after immigration minister Robert Jenrick resigned over the bill.

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Draft Bill is the government’s last-ditch effort to convince the Supreme Court that Rwanda is a safe country to send asylum seekers to.

However, Mr. Jenrick posted his resignation letter on X, formerly known as Twitter, hours after the bill was published on Wednesday, saying it currently “does not go far enough.”

Suella Braverman, who was home secretary until last month, also said the bill is “destined to fail.”

Launching the bill in a televised statement on Thursday, Mr. Sunak said the bill will end “the merry-go-round of legal challenges” that have blocked the policy from taking off.

The government’s plan to send illegal immigrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda was initially stumped by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which emptied the first deportation flight. The policy was then challenged in domestic courts, with the Supreme Court ruling that it’s unlawful.

Home Secretary James Cleverly went to Kigali on Tuesday to upgrade the Rwanda deal to a legally-binding treaty, in a bid to reassure courts that Rwanda won’t send anyone back to their home country, a practice called refoulement that’s banned under international law so refugees won’t face the risk of persecution.

Under the treaty, Rwanda is obligated to treat relocated individuals in accordance with international law and is not allowed to send them on to anywhere expect to the UK upon the UK’s request, regardless of whether their asylum claims are approved.

Unaccompanied children won’t be eligible for removal to Rwanda.

The Bill

The emergency bill is designed to have Parliament recognise Rwanda as a safe country in general for the purpose of asylum and immigration.

If it’s passed, ministers and immigration officers would be legally obliged to consider Rwanda safe when deciding whether or not immigrant can be sent to the East African country.

It would also ban courts or tribunals from reviewing deportation decisions or allowing appeals against the decisions based on blanket claims that Rwanda would ill-treat asylum seekers or send them elsewhere.

But decision makers are still allowed to decide against sending someone to Rwanda based on the person’s particular individual circumstances. Courts and tribunals can also delay deportation if they believe an individual would otherwise “face a real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm.”

The legislation would also give ministers power to ignore ECHR orders to halt deportations and instruct courts to disregard such orders, but doesn’t include powers to dismiss the European Convention on Human Rights.

The draft says Mr. Cleverly is unable to state that the provisions in the bill are compatible with the Convention rights.

Jenrick: ‘Hope Over Experience’

In his resignation letter, Mr. Jenrick said he’s “grateful” that the prime minister has moved towards his position on the emergency legislation, but said the bill is still not going far enough.

Britain's Minister for Immigration, Robert Jenrick, arrives for a weekly meeting of Cabinet ministers at 10, Downing Street in London on May 16, 2023. Carl Court/Getty Images

“I am unable to take the currently proposed legislation through the Commons as I do not believe it provides us with the best possible chance of success,” he wrote.

“A bill of the kind you are proposing is a triumph of hope over experience. The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent.”

He also suggested the government is not moving fast enough to push through its plan to reduce legal migration.

The five-point plan, unveiled by Mr. Cleverly on Monday, is aimed at slashing the number of immigration by 300,000 after migration added an eye-watering 745,000 people to the UK’s population last year.

Estimates of UK's long-term migration by the Office for National Statistics. The Epoch Times

Mr. Jenrick said he’s “proud” of and “grateful” for the policy, but refuses to be “yet another politician who makes promise on immigration to the British public but does not keep them.”

“This package must be implemented immediately via an emergency rules change and accompanied by significant additional reforms at the start of next year to ensure we meet the 2019 manifesto commitment that every single Conservative MP was elected upon,” he wrote.

“The consequences for housing, public services, economic productivity, welfare reform, community cohesion and, more fundamentally, for trust in democratic politics are all too serious for this totemic issue to be anything other than a primary focus for the government.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme on Thursday, Ms. Braverman, who was replaced as home secretary last month, said “ultimately this bill will fail.”

She insisted the legislation must block all routes of legal challenge.

“We have to totally exclude international law, Refugee Convention, other broader avenues of legal challenge because the reality is ... people will bring legal claims, they will bring challenges through the courts, and those challenges will operate to block flights to Rwanda.”

Sunak: Rwanda Deal Would Collapse If It Went Further

Mr. Sunak wrote to Mr. Jenrick on Wednesday, saying it’s “disappointing” the latter had resigned because the pair “agree on the ends.”

“I fear that your departure is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation,” Mr. Sunak wrote. “It is our experience that gives us confidence that this will work.”

Addressing the nation on Thursday, Mr. Sunak said the bill “blocks every single reason that has ever been used to prevent flights to Rwanda from taking off.

The prime minister also said the UK has to allow legal challenges in the “extremely narrow” exceptions because it would otherwise “undermine the treaty” with Rwanda.

“As the Rwandans themselves have made clear, if we go any further, the entire scheme will collapse. And there is no point having a bill with nowhere to send people to,” he said.

The prime minister also said the won’t allow a foreign court to block flights.

“If the Strasbourg Court [the ECHR} chooses to intervene against the express wishes of our sovereign parliament. I will do what is necessary to get flights off,” he said, without specifying what it means.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, the French government expelled a Uzbek national in spite of the ECHR’s ban of his removal.

The Rwanda deal is the key part of the government’s plan to deter immigrants from crossing the English Channel from France.

Cumulative arrival of illegal immigrants by small boats. The Epoch Times

Mr. Sunak previously promised to stop the boat by the end of the year.

The number of crossings so far this year has come down by a large margin compared to the same period last year following a deal with Albania to return Albanian arrivals and other measures of tackling the smuggling gangs, but it’s still higher than the same period in 2021.

Some 90 percent of small boat arrivals claim asylum. According to the Home Office, by the end of May, 26 percent of asylum seekers who came on small boats since 2018 had received a decision, and 65 percent (8,399) had been granted refugee status or another type of leave.

Shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden told “Today” on Thursday morning that Labour will vote against the bill, adding that he doesn’t believe the scheme would work.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has previously labelled the Rwanda policy as “gimmicks,” saying he would tackle small boats by going after the smuggling gangs, and the Liberal Democrats have vowed to repeal the Illegal Migration Act, which underpins the Rwanda policy, on day one of a Lib Dems government.

The Conservative Party currently has a 51-seat majority. Mr. Sunak declined to answer whether he would throw rebels out of the party over the Rwanda bill, and told reporters the vote would not be treated as a vote of confidence in his government.

Sending illegal immigrants to a third country has contributed to Australia’s successful effort to stop the boats, but according to former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, his deportation policy was accompanied by other hardline measures, including media blackouts on individual boats, turning boats around at sea, and putting rescued migrants “on to unsinkable lifeboats just outside Indonesia’s 12-mile limit with only enough fuel to make it back to Java.”