Tories alarmed by 60% chance that judges will veto Rwanda plan

Tories alarmed by 60% chance that judges will veto plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda

  • Tories would have to campaign to leave ECHR if policy is ruled illegal, say advisers

Rishi Sunak has been hit by a fresh blow after Whitehall sources predicted his flagship policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda will be vetoed by judges.

Government advisers estimate there is a ’60 per cent chance’ that the scheme will be struck down when the UK Supreme Court delivers its judgment on the policy in the coming weeks.

The plan is key to the Prime Minister’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ carrying migrants across the Channel.

Judges are ruling on a decision by the Court of Appeal earlier this year, which stated that problems with Rwanda’s asylum system meant migrants sent there could be forced back to the country they had originally fled from.

This would be in breach of the ban on putting people at risk of torture in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Government strongly disputes they would be put in any such danger.

Government advisers estimate that there is a 60 per cent chance that judges at the UK Supreme Court will block the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda

Defeat would present another political headache for Mr Sunak in the wake of his double by-election drubbing in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire.

The Mid Bedfordshire win was the largest majority in terms of votes overturned by Labour at a by-election since 1945, leading polling experts to point to a landslide on the scale of Tony Blair’s in 1997.

Government advisers argue that if the Rwanda policy is ruled illegal, it would leave the Tories with no alternative but to fight the next election with a ‘Brexit-style’ campaign blaming the Strasbourg laws in the ECHR for the Government’s inability to tackle the issue.

A Tory source said: ‘There is growing pessimism about the Supreme Court. It’s finely balanced but probably 60/40 against a win.

‘If we lose, it’s got to be election campaign mode on getting us out of Strasbourg – put the old Vote Leave gang back together and run it relentlessly. We would run day after day of stories to put Labour on the back foot.’

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has described the arrival of 109,000 migrants illegally on small boats since 2018 as an ‘invasion’, and warned a ‘hurricane’ of mass migration was threatening the UK.

Migrants return to the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland. Government advisers say that the Tories would have to campaign to take the UK out of the ECHR in the next election if the Rwanda policy is ruled illegal

Rwanda, in East Africa, has been paid £140million so far to take asylum applicants off the UK’s hands under a deal struck last April. Legal challenges were started by ten migrants from Albania, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Vietnam – all single men who arrived on small boats, – who said it would breach their human rights.

Their case, backed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reached the Supreme Court earlier this month.

In the three-day hearing, Laura Dubinsky KC, for the UNHCR, told judges: ‘Rwanda’s refugee system is flawed by arbitrariness and unfairness and is not capable of delivering accurate decisions. Entrenched deficiencies in that system will require long-term reform and building of capacity.’

Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Secretary, told the court it should give ‘respect to the judgment of His Majesty’s Government’ in deciding whether Rwanda can be trusted to abide by human rights law. He added that the Government was ‘well placed’ to judge how a friendly foreign state will behave.

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