On Wednesday, the UK’s highest court ruled that the government’s Rwanda asylum policy is unlawful, leaving the plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda and prevent them from returning to the UK in disarray. The Supreme Court upheld a Court of Appeal ruling that the policy leaves people sent to Rwanda open to human rights breaches, meaning it cannot be implemented in its current form. The policy has been the subject of legal challenges since it was first announced by Boris Johnson in April 2022. The government has already spent £140m on the scheme, but flights were prevented from taking off in June last year after the Court of Appeal ruled the approach was unlawful due to a lack of human rights safeguards.
Ministers have been forced to reconsider their flagship immigration policy after 10 claimants in the Supreme Court case argued that ministers had ignored clear evidence that Rwanda’s asylum system was unfair and arbitrary. The legal case against the policy hinges on the principle of “non-refoulement,” which states that a person seeking asylum should not be returned to their country of origin if doing so would put them at risk of harm, which is established under both UK and international human rights law. In a unanimous decision, the five justices agreed with the Court of Appeal that there had not been a proper assessment of whether Rwanda was safe. The judgement does not ban sending migrants to another country, but it leaves the Rwanda scheme in tatters as it is not clear which other nations are prepared to do a similar deal with the UK.
Rishi Sunak, who has made tackling illegal immigration a central focus of his government, signalled he is not willing to give up on the plan, and has set out measures he says will revive it. He told MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions that he was ready to finalise a formal treaty with Rwanda and would be “prepared to revisit our domestic legal frameworks” in a bid to revive the plan. Downing Street has said it will publish the treaty in the “coming days,” which would upgrade the agreement between the UK and Rwanda from its current status as a “memorandum of understanding,” which the government believes would put the arrangement on a stronger legal footing.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes amidst the political fallout from the sacking of Suella Braverman on Monday, who, as home secretary had championed the Rwanda policy. In a highly critical letter, published after her sacking and the day before the ruling, she said the prime minister had “failed to prepare any sort of credible Plan B” in the event the Supreme Court halts the policy. Newly appointed Home Secretary James Cleverly told the Commons on Wednesday that the government had been “working on a plan to provide the certainty that the court demands” for “the last few months.
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