The UK government is facing objections from MPs within their own party over plans to send migrants to Rwanda for processing and resettlement. Chancellor Rishi Sunak sees the controversial measures as key to preventing boat crossings of the English Channel. However, last month, the Supreme Court declared that Rwanda wasn’t a safe destination and criticised the flawed asylum system. As a result, the government introduced the Safety of Rwanda Bill, which requires judges to regard the African country as safe, prevents the taking into account of international laws, and enables the Human Rights Act to be disregarded in some cases. MPs are due to debate the bill this Tuesday.
Rising political pressure means that Sunak, who wishes to avoid being defeated at the hands of Tory Party rebels and the Labour Party, has been calling MPs personally to urge them to vote in favour of the bill. The European Research Group, a group of pro-Brexit MPs, are also objecting to the legislation, in part, because the bill doesn’t exclude individual appeals from the European Court of Human Rights. Meanwhile, the One Nation group of MPs is taking legal advice from former Solicitor General Lord Garnier. He has dismissed the bill’s provisions as “political nonsense and legal nonsense” while comparing the proposals on such matters as the definition of what constitutes a safe country to legislation claiming all dogs are cats.
The government, therefore, is relying heavily on calls to reassure MPs. For instance, MPs raising human rights concerns are being told that, contrary to some reports, not all the Human Rights Act is being disapplied. Instead, asylum seekers facing serious irreversible harm can still challenge a decision to be deported on an individual basis. Conversely, MPs worried about the “stop the boats” strategy have the assurance that legal challenges by deported asylum seekers would be unlikely to succeed. Grenfell Survivors and bereaved families critical of the government’s current response have called this approach showing “contempt for human rights, compassionate responsibility, or basic decency”
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