Home secretary Priti Patel’s highly-controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday’s deportation flight has been given the go-ahead by the Court of Appeal.
Judges rejected a last-ditch attempt by campaigners to have the first flight blocked until a full hearing on the lawfulness of the “offshore processing” scheme can be heard in July.
But campaigners are increasingly optimistic that the government will be forced to cancel Tuesday’s flight after a series of successful individual legal challenges.
It came as senior Church of England bishops wrote an open letter excoriating the plan for its lack of compassion, saying: “This immoral policy shames Britain.”
The Care4Calais group said several more names were taken off the flight list on Monday – leaving only seven people cleared for deportation to Rwanda.
Clare Moseley, founder of the group, told The Independent: “We’ll have to fight every single case individually. We’re very hopeful all of them will be removed from the flight list.”
Home Office sources insisted that the department would push ahead with the flight – which the government has already paid for – even if there was just one person left booked on board.
One source told The Independent: “The flight would go ahead [if one person was on board]. Legal challenges are still coming in, so we’ll have to wait and see if it goes ahead.”
Up to 130 people were originally told they could be sent to Rwanda under the controversial scheme. But the Home Office said at the end of last week that only 31 people were due to leave on the first flight.
Since then a flurry of legal challenges have seen the passenger list dwindle. Campaigners said they expected to find a lawyer on Monday to make a challenge on behalf for the last person in the group without legal representation.
According to Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the flight was scheduled to fly to the Rwandan capital Kigali on Tuesday at 9.30pm from Stansted airport.
The Court of Appeal rejected the last-ditch bid to block the flight brought by Care4Calais and Detention Action, and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), who challenged the legal principle of the overall policy.
Judges upheld the High Court judge’s initial decision from Friday, stating: “This court cannot therefore interfere with that conclusion.”
Appeal judge Justice Singh, sitting with Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, pointed out that the lawfulness of the scheme would be considered in full by the High Court in July. The judges also refused permission for a further appeal to the Supreme Court.
It emerged that the Home Office admitted to an “error” in letters sent out to some asylum seekers because its own Rwanda safety report – which included warnings from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that deportation was not safe – had been “misread”.
In a submission at Monday’s hearing, a Home Office official conceded that “errors” were made in seven letters that mischaracterised the involvement of the UNHCR in the government’s Rwanda plan.
Raza Husain QC – acting on behalf of campaign groups – said that the Home Office had “apologised” for misleading asylum seekers about the UNHRC position.
Conservatives cheered in the Commons as Tory backbencher Mike Wood told the House that the appeal court bid to block the policy had failed. Senior Labour MP Chris Bryant ironically shouted: “Bloody lefty lawyers.”
Earlier, Tory MP Scott Benton told BBC Politics Live: “We knew this policy was going to be attacked by left-wing, woke lawyers. If the flight takes place with just several people on, that will then set a precedent. Flights will go every single week from the Home Office.”
However, the Home Office would not say how regularly flights to Rwanda could take place. Government lawyers told the court that the department plans to schedule “further flights” this year.
On Monday Boris Johnson defended the controversial Rwanda plan – insisting that the scheme was always going to have legal “teething problems”.
Asked whether the flight would still take off it only one person was allowed to leave, the PM told LBC that the government had anticipated that “very active lawyers” would try to stop the flight.
Meanwhile, a separate charity has begun another last-minute legal challenge to a government plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
On Monday afternoon Asylum Aid asked a High Court judge to temporarily block ministers from enforcing the removal of “any asylum seeker” to Rwanda. Mr Justice Swift is considering the challenge at a High Court hearing in London.
