Fight to rescue the Rwanda policy

After the upheavals of the past week, yesterday should have come as a welcome relief for Rishi Sunak. One of his five key pledges, that inflation would be halved by the end of the year, was realised at 7am when the Office for National Statistics said prices were now rising at 4.6pc compared with close to 11pc in January. 

By 10am, however, another of his pledges had been torpedoed by the Supreme Court, which ruled that his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. But far from abandoning the plan, the Prime Minister said domestic law would be changed to override treaty blockages.

This is a high-risk strategy since it could face defeat in Parliament and another legal challenge. Yet having promised to “stop the boats” he has no option but to demonstrate to voters that he is on their side. He needs to stand firm if he is to confound the damning accusation of Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, that he has never really taken this matter seriously enough.

Mr Sunak captured the public mood when he said the country simply could not understand how courts and treaties could prevent a sovereign government fulfilling promises it had made to the electorate. But while he disagreed with the court’s ruling, he accepted it, as indeed he should. No prime minister can disobey the law as some Tories are urging him to do. The question now is whether he can produce watertight legislation that will satisfy not just European human rights judges but our own Supreme Court.

The Prime Minister said he would not allow foreign courts to override sovereign decisions, but these were domestic judges making this ruling on the grounds that Rwanda is not a safe third country to which to send asylum seekers, as required under international law. They ruled that this ran counter to the fundamental principle of non-refoulement which holds that an individual claiming to be a refugee cannot be returned, either directly or indirectly, to a country where they might face persecution. It is contained in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and other documents, including the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a signatory.

The judges did not rule that asylum seekers cannot be processed elsewhere but that the principle of non-refoulement must not be jeopardised. Mr Sunak hopes a new treaty will convince the court that Rwanda’s allegedly flawed system for processing refugees has been fixed. Moreover, the Government says the judges’ concerns were based on outdated information from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

However, since a new treaty may not convince the courts that Rwanda is a safe third country, the emergency legislation is there as a back-up. This could state that, notwithstanding the international treaties on non-refoulement, they would not apply in this case. This is a nuclear option – effectively overriding agreements to which Britain has been party for decades.

It is by no means certain that Mr Sunak would get such a measure through Parliament. Even with a Commons majority of 56, there are many Tories who do not want to see Britain set aside the ECHR even temporarily and he could be blocked in the Lords.

He said the policy was working in any case, with a one third decline in small boat crossings. The UK is one of the few European countries where illegal immigration is falling. Nevertheless, the Rwanda policy is an essential component because it is supposed to act as a deterrent to illegal migrants posing as asylum seekers.

Critics of the policy, like the Archbishop of Canterbury and Opposition MPs, have no credible alternative. Labour is promising some unspecified agreement with the EU that appears to involve an exchange of asylum seekers, with the UK possibly required to take thousands of the far larger numbers turning up on Europe’s shores.

Despite the Supreme Court judgment, the Government has not abandoned its Rwanda policy and Mr Sunak now has to make it work. He will have a fight on his hands in Parliament and almost certainly faces another legal battle. The Prime Minister knows the country expects him to deliver. He cannot be seen to back down, even if the prospects of success are receding. He was right to say that the patience of voters can be stretched only so far – but that applies to prime ministerial promises as well as court judgments.