10 January 2024 , 18:25
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Rishi Sunak is trying to "fundamentally change reality" by declaring Rwanda a safe country - while his flagship deportation project won't tackle asylum backlogs, MPs heard.
The PM faces two days of bitter fighting next week as he tries to push through controversial legislation aimed at resurrecting the Tory deportation plan. His hotly-contested Safety of Rwanda Bill will see MPs proclaim the African nation is a safe place to send asylum seekers, despite Supreme Court judges saying it's not.
Tyrone Steele, interim legal director at law charity Justice, said the Bill "has tried to fundamentally change reality". He added: "It tries to create this legal fiction that Rwanda is safe despite the Supreme Court finding that's not the case."
Meanwhile Beatrice Stern, head of public affairs at the Refugee Council, said: "It's our view that the Rwanda plan won't deal with the problem of the backlog of people that are already in the country and who will continue to come."
She told members of the Human Rights Joint Committee that there are around 15,000 people who arrived since July, when the Government's Illegal Migration Act passed, who would be at risk of being sent there. But she said Rwanda doesn't have the capacity to deal with such a number - meaning thousands face being left in limbo.
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She told MPs and peers: "The Government would say that the Rwanda plan is uncapped, but the reality is that capacity in the early stages will be in the hundreds."
Next week MPs will spend two days on the Bill, with right-wing Tories demanding a string of changes to Mr Sunak's legislation. The Prime Minister was warned by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick that the plan "simply doesn't work" in its current form.
Dozens of right-wing Conservatives are backing amendments to the Bill, calling for ministers to ignore international law and to severely limit individual migrants' ability to resist being put on a flight to Kigali. Mr Jenrick refused to say whether he would vote for the legislation if it is not rewritten.
"This is the third piece of legislation in three years, it's three strikes or you're out, we've got to get this right," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. The measures Mr Jenrick and his allies are pushing would end what he called the "merry-go-round of individual claims whereby illegal migrants claim every possible defence in order to frustrate their removal to Rwanda" and would prevent flights being grounded by emergency injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who backs the changes put forward by Mr Jenrick and Sir Bill Cash, said: "To not adopt these amendments, and introduce another failing Bill, will be a betrayal of the British people." Writing in the Daily Mail, she said: "As drafted, this Bill will not stop the boats. The Government's own lawyers have also reportedly advised that the scheme, as currently laid out, is fundamentally flawed. They rightly conclude that it will be bogged down with individual legal challenges from migrants."
Mr Sunak has said he would welcome "bright ideas" on how to improve the Bill, but has previously insisted it already strikes the right balance. But members of the moderate One Nation Conservatives said they won't accept the Bill being pushed any further, setting up a bruising two days on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Rwanda deportation scheme has cost £240million so far, with a further £50million committed for next year, but so far not a single asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda due to the legal challenges.