Ministers are “absolutely determined” to get a removal flight to Rwanda off before the next election, Home Secretary James Cleverly has said, after the policy was ruled unlawful.
The Cabinet minister said he does not “think” the UK will need to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as they come under pressure from the Tory right.
He defended plans for emergency legislation to get Parliament to deem Rwanda a “safe” country despite the Supreme Court’s concerns over risks to asylum seekers.
But Mr Cleverly was unable to deny that he privately described the policy of removing migrants who arrive by unauthorised means to east Africa as “batshit”.
The Government is working to broker a new legally binding treaty on top of the £140 million deal already struck with Kigali after five top justices ruled against the policy on Wednesday.
Mr Cleverly insisted that MPs could ratify the treaty once it is agreed and pass new laws within days.
“The whole process won’t necessarily be done and dusted just in a few days, but the actual parliamentary process can be that quick,” he told Times Radio.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and many of his Conservative MPs are concerned that a failure to “stop the boats” will hit them badly at the next general election, expected within a year.
Asked if a flight will take off before then, the Home Secretary told Times Radio: “We’re absolutely determined to make that happen.”
But he admitted “the timescales that we are looking at can vary depending on circumstances”.
Yvette Cooper, his Labour shadow, has accused Mr Cleverly of not really believing in the Rwanda scheme, alleging that he once described it in private as “batshit”.
Mr Cleverly did not deny saying it, instead telling Sky News: “I don’t recognise that phrase, and the point that I’ve made, and the point I made at the despatch box, is that the Rwanda scheme is an important part – but only a part – of the range of responses we have to illegal migration.”
Under pressure from Suella Braverman and the right of the Conservative Party, Mr Sunak has kept the threat of pulling out of the ECHR on the table for the future.
But Mr Cleverly told Sky News: “We don’t think we are going to need to. We don’t think that is a point that will come up.”
Instead he talked about “reform” to the Convention.
The Government will face opposition to its plans in the House of Lords, where former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption sits.
Lord Sumption told the BBC the “profoundly discreditable” plan to use a law to declare Rwanda as safe is “constitutionally really quite extraordinary”.
He argued it will “effectively overrule a decision on the facts, on the evidence, by the highest court in the land”.
Often a critic of the human rights court in Strasbourg, the peer said the plan “won’t work internationally. It will still be a breach of the Government’s international law obligations”.
But Mr Cleverly dismissed the criticism, telling Radio 4’s Today programme: “Find me two lawyers and I will give you three opinions.
“Lawyers argue all the time, that’s literally what they do. I have very eminent lawyers who take a different view.”
The emergency legislation aimed at ensuring the Rwanda scheme can go ahead will be produced “in the coming weeks”, Downing Street said.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Certainly we want to do it as quickly as possible.”
The Government believes the new Rwanda legislation will prevent “systemic challenges” to the legality of the policy.
“We think this is the fastest route through to getting flights in the air,” the spokesman said. “We think by closing off these avenues of challenge it will help speed through the process.”
The yet-to-be-published treaty with Rwanda is expected to attempt to address the Supreme Court’s concerns around refoulement — the potential for refugees whose applications for asylum are rejected by Kigali to be sent back to the country they are fleeing from.
The UK Government is set to confirm that no asylum seekers deported to east Africa would be returned to their country of origin, instead possibly remaining in Rwanda or being taken back to Britain.
Downing Street suggested that, while the UK would support asylum seekers through the asylum process in Rwanda, any British financial assistance was likely to end once their application is determined, even if their claim is rejected.
Asked whether failed asylum seekers would continue to receive financial support from the UK, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said: “There is support that comes through going through and being granted asylum status.
“But beyond that processing support, that is not my understanding, no.
“But we will set out more details on how it will work in the treaty when we lay that.”
Doris Uwicyeza Picard, the chief technical adviser to Rwanda’s minister of justice who has been negotiating the deal with the UK, said the Supreme Court ruling was “disappointing”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s World At One: “We do take offence to some of the comments made in the court regarding the safety of Rwanda, Rwanda has been a safe haven refugees for quite some time now.”
