We’ll make the Rwanda deal watertight, says Downing Street
RISHI Sunak’s Plan B for rwanda deportations will be ‘watertight’, it was claimed last night, amid fears proposed tactics could be thwarted by government lawyers.
Insiders say the Prime Minister is determined to make the new emergency legislation to tackle illegal migration ‘very robust’ – despite warnings from within Whitehall that it must not override human rights laws.
Mr Sunak is also expected to authorise millions more pounds to be given to rwanda to improve its asylum system, while Home Secretary James Cleverly is set to sign an improved treaty with the east African country in the next week.
It comes as the latest figures show 1,264
‘Up for taking robust measures’
would-be refugees braved icy conditions to cross the Channel in the past week, including 519 on Saturday alone.
The number of illegal migrants reaching the UK this year is now believed to have topped the 28,526 recorded in 2021 – although arrivals are still a third down on the record set last year.
Last night a government source said: ‘As the PM said, the British people want action and their patience has been stretched. The Government is up for taking robust measures, providing they work.’
The PM announced his new approach last month after the Supreme Court dealt a fatal blow to the original plan by ruling that there were ‘substantial grounds’ to believe people put on a one-way flight to rwanda could be sent on to other countries where they would be unsafe.
The Plan B comprises three parts: a treaty with rwanda, emergency legislation to declare the country is safe, and a bundle of evidence explaining why anyone sent there would not be mistreated.
There has been intense debate in the Tory party over how far the Bill should go, with more than 20 MPs on the right demanding what is now known as a ‘full fat’ option.
This would include so- called ‘notwithstanding’ clauses, allowing the Government to ignore the UK’s Human rights Act and the european Convention on Human rights (ECHR) in asylum cases as well as removing the right of migrants to challenge their deportation through judicial review. A less hardline approach would override human rights law while still allowing challenges by individuals.
But there are concerns that ministers are receiving advice from officials including government lawyers who say they cannot do anything they feel would breach the Civil Service Code such as ignoring human rights laws.
‘It’s anathema to them,’ said one insider. ‘They will say “I don’t want to be the lawyer who does this”.’ Because Mr Cleverly has only been in his new role as Home Secretary for a few weeks, Attorney General Victoria Prentis is playing a major role looking through the draft Bill.
She is understood to have warned that disapplying the ECHR would be unlawful.
As officials continued to work on the plan over the weekend, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins told Sky news yesterday: ‘It will take a little bit of time to draw up this legislation because we want to make sure it’s in the right form.’ Asked if it would appear before Christmas she said: ‘I know the Home Secretary is working incredibly hard and quickly on this.’