The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Senior lawyer drafting Rwanda Bill told PM it would not work
A SENIOR lawyer who advised on Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill warned ministers that its chances of securing deportation flights were severely restricted.
Lord Pannick, one of the UK’s top constitutional and human rights lawyers, was asked by the Government to help draft the Bill designed to pave the way for flights to Rwanda.
However, sources claim its drafting was constrained by the Attorney General Victoria Prentis, who was determined to limit any breaches of international refugee and human rights laws.
The final version, published on December 6, blocked any systemic legal challenges that claim the scheme is unsafe under the human rights act, the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR) or international agreements, including the Refugee Convention of 1951. It also disapplied the Human Rights Act.
But clause four of the Bill allows individual migrants to appeal their deportation if they could produce “compelling” evidence that their removal to Rwanda would put them at imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm.
Suella Braverman, who had been sacked as home secretary in November, and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister who resigned on the day the bill was published, had been pushing for a watertight Bill that would block any legal challenge including those by individual asylum seekers.
They feared that clause four would be exploited by “ingenious” lawyers to mount multiple challenges that would clog up the courts and delay, if not prevent, deportation flights.
Lord Pannick, who provided ongoing legal advice, is said to have accepted the right to individual claims was a deficiency. Government lawyers admitted that there was “50 per cent at best” chance of getting flights to Rwanda before the election.
A source familiar with the internal wrangling said: “Lord Pannick acknowledged that without addressing individual claims the scheme would be severely impeded.”
The lawyer has argued cases before courts ranging from the Supreme Court to House of Lords and European Court of Human Rights, and represented clients from Boris Johnson and BBC DG Mark Thompson to Gina Miller in her Brexit case against the Government and Shamima Begum.
Another source said that the Attorney General opposed notwithstanding clauses – which create exemptions from existing legislation –- and the “disapplication of the Human Rights Act” as the Illegal Migration Act was drawn up.
“Her fingerprints are all over this new Bill,” they added. “She was leading on the drafting of the Bill and making sure it was constrained.”
Sources close to the Attorney General have denied she sought to control the process to constrain the Bill.
It is understood Mr Jenrick told colleagues that the Home Office needed to “take back control” of the Bill having been excluded from a No 10 meeting on the legislation with the Attorney General and lawyers on Nov 20 when a draft copy of the Bill was photographed.
The disclosure comes as the Government attempts to head off a revolt by Right-wing MPs seeking to toughen up the legislation including limiting the scope for individual challenges.
The Prime Minister has insisted the
Bill is the only approach that will prevent further legal challenges scuppering flights – a view the Government says has been supported by a raft of eminent lawyers including former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption.
He has warned rebels that Rwanda would pull out of the scheme if it went further by breaching international refugee and human rights conventions, while MPs from the centre-Left One Nation group have warned they could rebel if it is hardened up.
Earlier this month Mr Sunak said he was confident that flights would take off before the general election, and pledged to “finish the job”.
Lawyers from the Tory Right’s “star chamber” are to work with the Government’s legal experts to establish whether and how the Bill could be “tightened” without provoking a separate rebellion by One Nation MPs.
‘Without addressing individual claims, the scheme would be severely impeded’