Sunak says he will change law after supreme court rules against Rwanda policy

Rishi Sunak has vowed to introduce emergency legislation to rescue his stricken policy of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda after the UK supreme court ruled against the scheme.

The court said in a unanimous decision on Wednesday that the government’s policy was unlawful, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer saying the ruling had “blown up” the prime minister’s Rwanda policy.

Mr Sunak said at a Downing Street press conference he still intended to put asylum seekers on planes to the African nation “in the spring next year”. He said he would introduce a new law and defy European judges if necessary to make it happen.

But some Conservative MPs claimed Mr Sunak’s new plan was flawed and would still get bogged down in the courts. One minister said: “There is no chance anyone will be on a plane to Rwanda before the election.”

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Mr Sunak said a new treaty would be agreed with Rwanda to address concerns raised by the supreme court and then MPs would be asked to approve legislation to endorse the treaty.

“This will enable parliament to confirm that, with our new treaty, Rwanda is safe,” he added. Sunak’s allies claim that once parliament has endorsed the treaty in law, it should stop the policy being challenged in UK courts.

Earlier Lord Robert Reed, president of the supreme court, said asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at real risk of being repatriated to their countries of origin without proper consideration of their claims.

The court said in its judgment: “There are substantial grounds for believing that the removal of the claimants to Rwanda would expose them to a real risk of ill-treatment by reason of refoulement.”

Refoulement is the forced return of asylum seekers to their home countries when they are likely to face persecution.

Mr Sunak said a new treaty with Rwanda would state that people transferred from Britain would have protections against further removal from Rwanda.

“It will make clear that we will bring anyone back if ordered to do so by the court,” he added. But he admitted the Rwanda scheme could still face a legal challenge in Strasbourg.

Mr Sunak fired a warning shot at the European Court of Human Rights, saying: “We will not allow a foreign court to block these flights.”

But right-wing Tory MPs claimed Sunak had not gone far enough. Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, co-chairs of the New Conservatives group, said Mr Sunak’s emergency law should disapply the UK Human Rights Act and “give effect to the policy *notwithstanding* the ECHR and [UN] Refugee Convention”.

Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson said Mr Sunak should ignore the Supreme Court ruling. “I think we should just get the planes in the air now and send them to Rwanda,” he told reporters.

I think we should just get the planes in the air now and send them to Rwanda

However, Sir David Normington, former permanent secretary at the Home Office, said it was “not enough for the government to declare somewhere is safe”.

He added: “The prime minister said he is going to change the law. But I don’t see how they can get over the basic problem: that Rwanda has been judged by the supreme court to be unsafe.”

The Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, said Sunak’s new proposal would “raise profound and important questions” about the respective roles of the courts and parliament if its effect was to reverse the supreme court on a factual question.

The government’s deal with Rwanda, which received an initial £120 million payment from the UK last year, has been a showpiece policy of successive Conservative administrations.

Suella Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary by Sunak on Monday, said the government should legislate in order to block legal challenges under the ECHR and the Human Rights Act.

Lord Reed stressed in the Supreme Court judgment that the ECHR was not the only legal basis for its decision, saying the UK was bound by other treaties, including the UN Refugee Convention.

The court upheld an earlier decision by the court of appeal, which found real risks that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda could be removed to their countries of origin in potential breach of the convention.

“The changes needed to eliminate the risk of refoulement may be delivered in future, but they have not been shown to be in place now,” Reed said.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023