UK’s Rwanda asylum deal suffers another setback

Legislation that seeks to block further court challenges to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda will next be debated in parliament on April 15.

The government wants to relocate thousands of asylum seekers who arrive in Britain on small, inflatable boats each year to live in Rwanda, but legal challenges have so far prevented anyone being sent to the East African country yet.

To overcome objections by the court, Sunak’s government is passing the bill that declares Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers and disapplies parts of human rights law in an attempt to block further legal challenges.

The bill must return to the House of Commons after the House of Lords on Wednesday defeated the government and reinstated demands for greater protections in a process known as “ping pong”, where it is passed between the two parliamentary chambers until they can agree the final wording.

The House of Lords voted for amendments that would require ministers to take “due regard to domestic and international law” and another that would only declare Rwanda a safe country when a treaty with Britain had been implemented.

The legislation will now be debated after the House of Commons’ Easter break, according to an announcement of upcoming parliamentary business by leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt.

Prime Minister Sunak said on Monday he still expects the government to begin deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda in the spring, maintaining the original timeline for the scheme which is currently being debated in parliament.

“I’m still committed to the timeline that I set out previously, which is we aim to get a flight off in the spring,” Sunak told reporters during a trip to Coventry in central England, referring to planes carrying migrants.

“It is important that we get the Rwanda scheme up and running, because we need to have a deterrent (to illegal migration).”

The legislation is central to Sunak’s pledge to stop the arrival of asylum seekers and he hopes the deportation flights will reverse the fortunes of his Conservative Party, which is heavily trailing in the polls with the next election looming.

The government suffered a setback to its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda last year when the UK’s Supreme Court ruled the policy was unlawful because there was risk that people sent there could be sent back to their country of origin and their safety jeopardised.

The asylum plan

Under a five-year agreement, some asylum seekers arriving in the UK would be sent to Rwanda, to have their claims processed there.

If successful, they could be granted refugee status and allowed to stay. If not, they could apply to settle in Rwanda on other grounds, or seek asylum in another “safe third country”. No asylum seeker would be able to apply to return to the UK. In November 2023, the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Rwanda scheme was unlawful.

It said genuine refugees would be at risk of being returned to their home countries, where they could face harm.

This breaches the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which prohibits torture and inhuman treatment. The UK is a signatory to the ECHR.