Not surprisingly, in his budget the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, made no mention of the fact that the government’s flagship plan to send refugees to Rwanda will cost taxpayers overall more than £500m. As the National Audit Office has revealed: for each of the first 300 people that will be flown to Kigali, it will cost a staggering £1.8m.
It is hard to believe that it was almost two years ago, in a speech in the Rwandan capital, that Priti Patel, the then home secretary, presented the UK/Rwanda deal to the world as a “groundbreaking agreement”.
Yet the government is still trying to get more laws through parliament to make it happen. Having already passed the Illegal Migration Act – which, as was made clear by the UNHCR, amounts to an “asylum ban” – the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill is now reaching its final stages, with the Lords voting to radically amend it on Monday and Wednesday.
Prominent peers, including those on the government’s benches, expressed deep dismay that the bill rides roughshod over the rule of law by overturning the supreme court judgment that Rwanda is not a safe country to which to send people seeking asylum. Lord Tugendhat, the Conservative peer whose nephew Tom Tugendhat is a Home Office minister, lambasted the government for behaving like the ruling party in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The barrister and independent crossbencher Lord Anderson pointedly said the legislation “takes us for fools”.
In all, peers have made 10 changes to the bill, including ensuring it complies with the rule of law and that parliament cannot declare Rwanda to be safe until the treaty that governs removals to the east African country, which includes safeguards, is fully implemented. The Lords also made important amendments to ensure far greater protections for victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, and for children whose age is disputed. The bill will return to the Commons in less than two weeks – and the government will certainly reject all the Lords amendments.
The word in Westminster is that the only very modest concession No 10 is prepared to offer is to put in place an independent monitoring mechanism. This would replace the current arrangements for a monitoring committee that has already been appointed by the UK and Rwandan governments, and includes those supportive of the policy such as Alexander Downer, a former Australian politician who has been a vocal advocate for it.
This, of course, won’t buy off the Lords and there will be a period of parliamentary ping-pong with the Commons before the legislation is expected to pass by the end of the month, ahead of the Easter holiday. Labour isn’t expected to dig in at the last minute, so the government will get it on the statute book without too much difficulty. The opposition’s calculation seems to be that the policy will ultimately fail, so better to let that happen and the government to further lose the confidence of the electorate as a result.
The prime minister has already committed to flights taking off this spring and Home Office officials are planning for that, with the word in the department being they have been told it must be done by the end of May. No 10 is convinced that as soon as a flight takes off it will act as the deterrent to stop people making the dangerous journey across the Channel.
But this is engaging in a form of Orwellian doublethink – it wasn’t long ago that Rishi Sunak himself, when he was chancellor, doubted whether the plan would work, as the BBC revealed.
Indeed, the idea that Rwanda will achieve any serious deterrent effect is an unfounded and ideological position. Instead, it will cause more human misery and there will be more deaths in the Channel. Evidence published by the Refugee Council from organisations that support people who are seeking asylum finds that the fear of being sent to Rwanda will simply result in riskier journeys to avoid detection on arrival. This includes actively avoiding the coastguard and rescue agencies and trying to reach more remote beaches. “People are saying they will not stop coming: it’s better to die trying,” explains one of the organisations working with people currently in northern France.
There is also a new and more permanent backlog being created as the vast majority of people eligible for removal to Rwanda under the legislation won’t be sent there. Ministers have said Rwanda can only take hundreds in the first year.
Tens of thousands will be left in limbo – and as they will be banned from applying for asylum, it won’t be possible to put them through any kind of refugee determination process. They will be left on immigration bail in the community – the use of hotels at the current extortionate daily cost will have to continue – and be expected to report periodically to the Home Office. Inevitably they will lose contact with the authorities and disappear, as there will be no incentive to stay in touch if they aren’t in the asylum process.
It’s easy to forget that the Rwanda plan is about these people: refugees who are the human faces behind the political and legal arguments. It is ultimately about whether we choose to give them a fair hearing on our soil and treat them with the dignity and humanity they deserve, or treat them as undeserving, inferior subhumans to be banished to an unsafe country.
Enver Solomon is chief executive of the Refugee Council
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