The UK Supreme Court has ruled the government’s controversial Rwanda policy is unlawful only hours after outgoing Home Secretary Suella Braverman said there was “no credible Plan B.”
The Home Office wanted to transport asylum seekers to the Rwandan capital, Kigali if they arrived in Britain illegally, and it was quite clear the policy was designed to deter those who crossed the English Channel in small boats.
After the ruling, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was, “not the outcome we wanted” but he said he remained, “completely committed to stopping the boats.”
The policy would also have put Rwanda in charge of processing asylum applications to the UK.
But Wednesday’s ruling by Lord Reed, president of the Supreme Court, Lord Hodge, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Briggs and Lord Sales said there was a risk that genuine asylum seekers would be sent back to the country from where they had fled by Rwanda.
Last month, the Home Office challenged a Court of Appeal ruling from June which overturned the High Court’s finding that Rwanda could be considered a “safe third country” for illegal immigrants.
Lawyers representing people facing deportation to the African nation had argued Rwanda was an, “authoritarian, one-party state” with a “woefully deficient” asylum system.
‘Real Risk’ of Asylum Seekers Facing ‘Ill Treatment’
Lord Reed said the “legal test” was whether there were “substantial grounds” for believing asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at “real risk” of being sent back to the countries they came from where they originated and where they might face “ill treatment.”He said: “In the light of the evidence which I have summarised, the Court of Appeal concluded that there were such grounds. We are unanimous of the view that they were entitled to reach that conclusion. Indeed, having been taken through the evidence ourselves, we agree with their conclusion.”
The ruling will be another major blow for Downing Street, which has admitted the Rwanda policy was a “crucial” part of its plans to halt the small crossings.
Mr. Sunak has said stopping the illegal small boat crossings was one of his five pledges to voters ahead of next year’s general election.
But this year more than 27,300 people have made unauthorised crossings of the English Channel.
On Tuesday night, in a letter laced with vitriolic criticism of Mr. Sunak, Ms. Braverman said he had no, “credible Plan B” if the judges ruled the Rwanda police was unlawful.
Braverman Criticised Sunak’s ‘Magical Thinking’
“Worse than this, your magical thinking—believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion—has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’,” she told the prime minister.She said even if it was approved by the Supreme Court, it was likely to be, “thwarted yet again” by the European Court of Human Rights.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said the idea of Britain leaving the European Convention on Human Rights had not been discussed at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, which saw the new home secretary, James Cleverly, sitting alongside the foreign secretary, and former prime minister, Lord Cameron.
The Rwanda policy was originally proposed and announced by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel in April 2022, after she reached an agreement with the government in Kigali.
Sonya Sceats, chief executive at charity Freedom from Torture, welcomed the Supreme Court ruling and said: “This is a victory for reason and compassion. We are delighted that the Supreme Court has affirmed what caring people already knew, the UK government’s ‘cash for humans’ deal with Rwanda is not only deeply immoral, but it also flies in the face of the laws of this country.”
Critics said the Rwanda policy, even if it had been approved, would have only made a small dent in the asylum backlog.
