Rwanda dream could still become a nightmare for Suella Braverman

Suella Braverman’s self-confessed dream of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is still alive. But it could yet turn into a slow-moving nightmare which will not satisfy the demands of backbench Conservative MPs to see a flight take off for Kigali before the next general election.

The home secretary spoke in October of her “obsession” with the plan – drawn up by her predecessor Priti Patel – to send a plane carrying asylum seekers to the central African state with a dubious human rights record.

And, for visceral political reasons, it has become Rishi Sunak’s obsession too. Aghast as their party leaks support to Labour and Reform UK (formerly the Brexit party), his party’s backbenchers are demanding that he stops the rising numbers of people crossing the Channel in small boats and the tragic deaths that follow.

Faced with a new YouGov poll saying that 72% of voters are unhappy with the government’s handling of immigration, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said of the Rwanda plan: “We want it to be done as soon as possible.”

On Monday, a judgment from the high court gave succour to Braverman and Sunak by putting to one side claims that Rwanda previously mistreated asylum seekers and that political opponents of the president, Paul Kagame, had been disappeared or jailed.

Lord Justice Lewis, sitting with Mr Justice Swift, dismissed a challenge of the policy as a whole from asylum seekers, a union and two charities.

“The court has concluded that it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom,” they ruled.

An appeal by the claimants is already being prepared and the case will almost certainly be examined by both the court of appeal and the supreme court.

How long will this take to go through the courts? No one knows for sure. Ask lawyers, and they say it is more likely to be years rather than months. And quite possibly not in time for the next general election.

Deportations to Rwanda cannot begin because of a European court of human rights ruling this summer, which said that removals cannot take place “until three weeks after delivery of the final domestic decision in ongoing judicial review proceedings”.

The claimants had challenged the Home Office’s assessment that Rwanda was a safe third country, citing internal government documents that repeatedly warned ministers about the country’s poor human rights record.

Judges heard that Foreign Office officials told Dominic Raab, the then foreign secretary, in March 2021 that if Rwanda was selected for the deportation policy “we would need to be prepared to constrain UK positions on Rwanda’s human rights record, and to absorb resulting criticism from UK parliament and NGOs”.

In another memo, Foreign Office officials said they had advised Downing Street against engagement with several countries including Rwanda.

The court also heard the UK high commissioner to Rwanda had previously indicated that the central African country should not be used as an option for the policy, telling the government it “has been accused of recruiting refugees to conduct armed operations in neighbouring countries”.

The challenge was backed by the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), which said Rwanda’s system for assessing refugees lacked the “minimum components of an accessible, reliable, fair and efficient asylum system”.

The UN said it knew of incidents where someone seeking asylum in Rwanda had been refused and sent back to a country where they would be at risk of torture and ill-treatment. One was sent to Syria.

But the court did not engage with many of the criticisms because the home secretary had only to show that she had properly examined the available evidence before endorsing the Rwanda deal.

The judges found that the government had made arrangements with Rwanda to ensure asylum claims are “properly determined”, and that in those circumstances deportations would be consistent with the refugee convention, Human Rights Act and other legal obligations.

Their judgment disclosed that a similar deal between Israel and Rwanda was never assessed by the UK government before signing the deportation deal. Reports in the Israeli press claimed that of about 4,000 people estimated to have been deported by Israel to Rwanda and Uganda under a “voluntary departure” scheme, most left the country almost immediately, with many attempting to return to Europe via people-smuggling routes.

Meanwhile, the Rwandan government has spent £140m it has received for the deal, and has so far put aside a single hotel to receive 200 asylum seekers flown from the UK, although it insists that it has the capacity to receive many more.