Enver Solomon is Chief Exective of the Refugee Council.
It is hard to believe that it is almost two years since the Government announced the Rwanda deal. On 14th April 2022, in a speech in the Rwandan capital, Priti Patel, then Home Secretary, presented the UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership to the world as a ground breaking agreement. She said: ‘It is the biggest overhaul of our immigration system in decades, underpinned by our Nationality and Borders Bill, which will soon become law.’
Yet two more flagship pieces of legislation later – the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill – the plan has yet to get off the ground. The Government, however, is far from giving up. Despite facing a rocky ride in the Commons. Rishi Sunak has warned peers not to ‘frustrate the will of the people’ as the Rwanda Bill passes through the second chamber.
Number 10 is convinced Rwanda is the best solution to delivering on its pledge to ‘stop the boats’. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sunak might have expressed doubt that the scheme will not act as a deterrent, as leaked documents to the BBC revealed. Now he’s so confident it will work he sems to be prepared to stake his entire premiership on it.
Does he know something about how successful it will be that we don’t? If he does, he hasn’t been sharing it with the top civil servant at the Home Office. When Matthew Rycroft appeared before the Public Accounts Committee shortly before the end of the year parliamentary recess in December he declared that there is no evidence of any deterrent effect yet.
The view from the frontline is that it is having a more damaging impact.
With asylum claims automatically deemed inadmissible under the new laws, people trying to reach the UK will have little incentive to remain in contact with authorities and will instead try 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.
The research also finds that people seeking asylum who are in the UK are already avoiding contact with organisations out of fear of detention and removal to Rwanda. One organisation reported that they had lost contact with nearly half of their clients. People will face heightened risks of labour and sexual exploitation, and the research found that traffickers stand to gain more control over increasingly marginalised groups.
This isn’t what the Prime Minister is expecting. Social media posts from the PM’s account declare: ‘If you come to the UK illegally you will be DETAINED and removed to a safe country in weeks’. It’s difficult to see how this will happen. The immigration system’s detention capacity is at most 3,000 places. There are already up to ten times this number – nearly 30,000 people – who have arrived in the UK via so-called irregular routes since the Illegal Migration Act was passed on 20th July.
That number is only going to grow as the months pass. Every one of these men, women, and children are banned under the new laws from applying for asylum, and pretty much all of them can’t be returned to their country of origin as those countries are not on the government’s so-called safe countries list. They will all be removed to Rwanda.
But as immigration ministers have admitted in parliamentary answers, Rwanda only can take hundreds in the first year and then a few thousand in the second year.
So what will happen? Tens of thousands will be left in the community most probably on immigration bail conditions 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 remain in touch if they aren’t in the asylum process.
There will be a huge backlog of people awaiting removal to Rwanda whom the Home Office won’t be able to keep track of. It will be chaotic and costly. The human consequences will be appalling with people likely to be exploited, trafficked, and criminalised.
And remember where many come from – countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria where oppressive regimes rule or where war rages so they would have been granted asylum and allowed to stay in the UK as refugees.
The reality that the Government doesn’t want to face up to is that there will be no winners from the Rwanda scheme apart from the government in Kigali which has already received up to £400 million even though not a single person has been sent there.
Refugees will be the victims who will face yet more human misery and harm for having done nothing other than come to the UK in search of safety. The Government won’t gain anything. It will only erode public trust further as more voters lose faith in its ability to deliver on unrealistic pledges.
We need smarter political leaders who are prepared to be honest with the public, admit that global refugee movements are complex, and that we need a well-thought-out plan rather than a flawed headline-grabbing scheme.
A new plan should focus on working globally to address the causes, putting in place safe routes for those who want to come to the UK and giving those who do have to take dangerous journeys a fair hearing on UK soil.
This doesn’t mean the UK takes every refugee in the world. But it does mean we play our part sharing responsibility with other nations instead of indiscriminately slamming our door in the face of all refugees who reach our shores. Many more European countries receive far more asylum applications per head of the population than the UK.
Some solutions are workable and humane, but the Rwanda plan is not one of them.
Enver Solomon is Chief Exective of the Refugee Council.
It is hard to believe that it is almost two years since the Government announced the Rwanda deal. On 14th April 2022, in a speech in the Rwandan capital, Priti Patel, then Home Secretary, presented the UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership to the world as a ground breaking agreement. She said: ‘It is the biggest overhaul of our immigration system in decades, underpinned by our Nationality and Borders Bill, which will soon become law.’
Yet two more flagship pieces of legislation later – the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill – the plan has yet to get off the ground. The Government, however, is far from giving up. Despite facing a rocky ride in the Commons. Rishi Sunak has warned peers not to ‘frustrate the will of the people’ as the Rwanda Bill passes through the second chamber.
Number 10 is convinced Rwanda is the best solution to delivering on its pledge to ‘stop the boats’. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sunak might have expressed doubt that the scheme will not act as a deterrent, as leaked documents to the BBC revealed. Now he’s so confident it will work he sems to be prepared to stake his entire premiership on it.
Does he know something about how successful it will be that we don’t? If he does, he hasn’t been sharing it with the top civil servant at the Home Office. When Matthew Rycroft appeared before the Public Accounts Committee shortly before the end of the year parliamentary recess in December he declared that there is no evidence of any deterrent effect yet.
The view from the frontline is that it is having a more damaging impact.
With asylum claims automatically deemed inadmissible under the new laws, people trying to reach the UK will have little incentive to remain in contact with authorities and will instead try 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.
The research also finds that people seeking asylum who are in the UK are already avoiding contact with organisations out of fear of detention and removal to Rwanda. One organisation reported that they had lost contact with nearly half of their clients. People will face heightened risks of labour and sexual exploitation, and the research found that traffickers stand to gain more control over increasingly marginalised groups.
This isn’t what the Prime Minister is expecting. Social media posts from the PM’s account declare: ‘If you come to the UK illegally you will be DETAINED and removed to a safe country in weeks’. It’s difficult to see how this will happen. The immigration system’s detention capacity is at most 3,000 places. There are already up to ten times this number – nearly 30,000 people – who have arrived in the UK via so-called irregular routes since the Illegal Migration Act was passed on 20th July.
That number is only going to grow as the months pass. Every one of these men, women, and children are banned under the new laws from applying for asylum, and pretty much all of them can’t be returned to their country of origin as those countries are not on the government’s so-called safe countries list. They will all be removed to Rwanda.
But as immigration ministers have admitted in parliamentary answers, Rwanda only can take hundreds in the first year and then a few thousand in the second year.
So what will happen? Tens of thousands will be left in the community most probably on immigration bail conditions 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 remain in touch if they aren’t in the asylum process.
There will be a huge backlog of people awaiting removal to Rwanda whom the Home Office won’t be able to keep track of. It will be chaotic and costly. The human consequences will be appalling with people likely to be exploited, trafficked, and criminalised.
And remember where many come from – countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria where oppressive regimes rule or where war rages so they would have been granted asylum and allowed to stay in the UK as refugees.
The reality that the Government doesn’t want to face up to is that there will be no winners from the Rwanda scheme apart from the government in Kigali which has already received up to £400 million even though not a single person has been sent there.
Refugees will be the victims who will face yet more human misery and harm for having done nothing other than come to the UK in search of safety. The Government won’t gain anything. It will only erode public trust further as more voters lose faith in its ability to deliver on unrealistic pledges.
We need smarter political leaders who are prepared to be honest with the public, admit that global refugee movements are complex, and that we need a well-thought-out plan rather than a flawed headline-grabbing scheme.
A new plan should focus on working globally to address the causes, putting in place safe routes for those who want to come to the UK and giving those who do have to take dangerous journeys a fair hearing on UK soil.
This doesn’t mean the UK takes every refugee in the world. But it does mean we play our part sharing responsibility with other nations instead of indiscriminately slamming our door in the face of all refugees who reach our shores. Many more European countries receive far more asylum applications per head of the population than the UK.
Some solutions are workable and humane, but the Rwanda plan is not one of them.