UK’s Rishi Sunak unveils plan to deem Rwanda safe for deportations

LONDON — Rishi Sunak tried to revive the British government’s controversial idea of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda with an “emergency” law meant to overcome objections to the scheme.

In fresh legislation published Wednesday night amid pressure from his Tory backbenchers, Sunak’s government moved to ensure courts cannot deem the east African nation unsafe for asylum purposes.

Combined with a fresh treaty with Rwanda, signed Tuesday, it’s a bid to address the central objections of the Supreme Court, which last month deemed the plan unlawful over concerns about the robustness of Rwanda’s asylum system. Conservative MPs on all wings of the party were poring over the detail Wednesday night.

The proposed law — the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill  — says courts “must conclusively treat Rwanda as a safe country,” and therefore can’t consider any challenge to someone’s deportation there on the grounds that Rwanda is unsafe. That applies even to complaints that Rwanda could remove the person to another country, or that migrants won’t receive “fair or proper consideration” of their claim.

Significantly, this part of the bill would apply “notwithstanding” certain elements of the U.K.’s flagship Human Rights Act, “any other provision or rule of domestic law” or “any interpretation of international law” by the court. Conservative moderates may baulk at those measures, amid fear the U.K. will ride roughshod over international commitments.

However, the planned law — which will face more scrutiny in the coming days — does not go as far as some of MPs on the Conservative right had been calling for. It includes caveats that immigration officers, immigration courts and tribunals can still stop someone being sent to Rwanda if those authorities believed it would be unsafe for them personally.

ECHR clash

The bill distances itself from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) loathed by some Tory MPs — but again may not go far enough to mollify them.

Its first line says Home Secretary James Cleverly is “unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.” But it does does not dis-apply the ECHR across the board, a move some Conservatives had called for.

The new legislation comes as part of a scramble to make good on the government’s promise that people who make “dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys” to the U.K. could be deported to Rwanda, with their asylum claims processed and decided on by Rwandan authorities.

Successful applicants would be settled in Rwanda, not the U.K. It was first promised in April 2022 by Boris Johnson, but has been snarled in the courts ever since.

Speaking in the Commons Wednesday, ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman — sacked by Sunak in a recent reshuffle and talked up as a possible future leader of the Tories — summed up the right-wing argument for action. “The Conservative party faces electoral oblivion in a matter of months if we introduce yet another bill destined to fail. Do we fight for sovereignty or do we let our party die?”

Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, whose party is currently streets ahead in the polls, on Wednesday branded the Rwanda plan a “gimmick” and said millions in public money on the scheme to date had delivered “nothing in return.”