Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, has resigned from his position, claiming the government’s emergency legislation for Rwanda is inadequate. “Stronger protections” are required to end “the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme,” he said. Although the legislation makes clear in UK law that Rwanda is a safe country for asylum seekers, it falls short of what some on the Tory right had demanded. Mr Jenrick said that the bill was “a triumph of hope over experience.”
The government’s plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda are aimed at discouraging people from crossing the English Channel in small boats. Legal challenges have repeatedly delayed the scheme, and no asylum seekers have yet been sent to Rwanda from the UK. Mr Jenrick stated that the emergency legislation was the “last opportunity” to demonstrate the government’s commitment to stopping small boat crossings. “But in its current drafting, it does not go far enough,” he added.
Reports of Mr Jenrick’s resignation emerged after the government published the draft bill, which aims to address the concerns of the Supreme Court. Last month, the court ruled that plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda were unlawful. The bill must be voted on by Parliament and orders the courts to ignore key sections of the Human Rights Act to circumvent the Supreme Court’s existing judgment. It also orders the courts to disregard other British laws or international rules that stand in the way of deportations to Rwanda. However, it falls short of the demands of some Tory MPs.
Mr Jenrick had been a supporter of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman while she was in government. She and her supporters had called for overriding the entire Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the Refugee Convention, and all other international law. The bill permits ministers to ignore an emergency order from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to temporarily halt a flight to Rwanda while an individual case is still being considered. But it does not disapply the whole of the ECHR. It also allows migrants to legally challenge their removal to Rwanda on specific individual grounds if they can prove that being put on a plane would leave them at real risk of serious harm
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