PM’s Rwanda plan gets boost from top judge

THE Rwanda asylum plan received a huge boost yesterday after a leading legal figure said the Supreme Court’s main objection had been ‘addressed’ by Rishi Sunak.

Lord Sumption – a former Supreme Court judge – told a parliamentary committee that the measures appeared to overcome fears that asylum seekers could be sent on to a country where they would be at risk.

His evidence will be seen as highly significant to the plan, which involves a new treaty with Rwanda combined with emergency legislation.

In November, Lord Sumption said it was ‘profoundly discreditable’ and ‘ constitutionally extraordinary’ for Mr Sunak to ‘change the facts’ by declaring Rwanda a safe country.

But in an extraordinary turnaround, he said yesterday that the new treaty was ‘very significant’. ‘It seems to me that that addresses the particular complaint about refoulement that the Supreme Court made,’ Lord Sumption told the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Refoulement is the legal term for sending an asylum seeker to a country where they may face persecution.

The treaty, signed last month, sets out how asylum seekers who are sent to Rwanda cannot later be deported to any other country apart from the UK.

However, Lord Sumption said the PM’s new measures are likely to breach human rights and international refugee laws by restricting access to the courts.

It came as it emerged that Labour peer Peter Golsmith, who led efforts to defeat the Rwanda treaty in the Lords this week, declared earnings of more than £380,000 from Azerbaijan for legal work last year. The sum was paid through legal firm Debevoise and Plimpton LLP, where he is a partner.

Human Rights Watch said in 2022 that Azerbaijan practised ‘systemic torture and ill-treatment in custody’.