Rishi Sunak said Rwanda's plan was 'crucial'; to resolve the migrant crisis but declined to say whether he was prepared to take more extreme measures to bring it to an end. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Rishi Sunak is leaning towards Rwanda's tough law to ensure deportations are carried out before the next election, The Telegraph understands.
The Prime Minister is understood to be leaning towards legislation that would allow ministers ignore the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on asylum without withdrawing from the treaty.
This is the option Robert is promoting. Jenrick, the immigration minister, met with the prime minister on Wednesday to try to hammer out a solution to get the Rwanda plan under way.
Mr Sunak is said to still be a long way from agreeing to the approach, dubbed the “full option”, which has also been backed by former home secretary Suella Braverman and more than 20 MPs from the right-wing Conservative Party.< /p>
The bill is due to be published before Christmas and possibly as early as next week.
Source No 10 insisted: “Nothing has been decided, everything is still on the table.” < /p>
Speaking in Dubai at the Cop28 conference, Mr Sunak said Rwanda's plan was “crucial” to solving the migrant crisis, but declined to say whether he was prepared to take extreme measures to implement the plan. .
He insisted he had “full confidence” that everything the government does complies with the UK's international obligations. “I have gone through this in great detail and am confident in this fact,” he said.
“I now want us to move to the next stage of this process, that we bring forward legislation to make this unequivocally clear and Parliament can confirm that Rwanda is safe for the purpose of introducing this scheme and thus ensure that there is no more internal obstacles to the proper functioning of the scheme.”
The bill would declare Rwanda safe for asylum seekers and would enshrine in law a new treaty designed to address criticism leveled at the Supreme Court's policy when it ruled the scheme was illegal.
The “full” option will allow the government to ignore the ECHR.No. 10 is considering two additional options. The first, the so-called semi-skimmed option, only overrides the UK Human Rights Act in asylum applications. However, this will not prevent problems from individual migrants.
The second, “full” option would go further and remove the right of judicial review and include “notwithstanding clauses” that would allow ministers to ignore the ECHR in the area of asylum without leaving from the contract.
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Passing the so-called “full” version of the Rwanda law would split the party among the nearly 30 left-wing Conservative MPs who are understood to have warned Mr Sunak they would oppose such a move.
Victoria Prentice, the attorney general, is understood to have previously warned that the Lords were likely to block the Rwanda bill if the government tried to circumvent the ECHR.But sources said she was more likely to stick to her advice in accordance with the law. than any political treatment of the bill. “She is working very hard on the bill and the treaty,” the source said.
Alex Chalk, the justice minister and a strong supporter of the ECHR, will reportedly keep his adviser until she sees the legislation finalized.< /p>
James Cleverley, the home secretary and a supporter of the ECHR, told MPs this week that he was looking for a “Goldilocks” version of the law, meaning it would pass through the House of Lords but would be robust enough to allow flights to Rwanda.
“Significant opposition within the Conservative Party”One senior One Nation MP warned: “There will be significant opposition within the Conservative Party to this [‘full’] option, not to mention what will happen.” in the House of Lords.
“We can assume that the Labor Party and the Scottish National Party will oppose this in the House of Commons. They will have difficulty in the House of Commons and I think there is almost no chance of such a bill passing through the House of Lords.
“It is too late for the Parliament Act [a rarely used law that allows the government to overrule a decision upper house]. It was not in the manifesto, so Lordships would have felt justified in blocking it.”
However, the MP said they would consider a compromise “semi-skimmed” version of repealing the Human Rights Act, although they warned “it would have been thrown out.”
Lord Carlisle, the government's former independent adviser on terrorism legislation, said there was “no, no, no” chance of the bill passing through the House of Lords if he allowed the ECHR to reject it. on asylum cases.
“It has become an election issue rather than a matter of principle. The House of Lords will fight every inch of the way. Taking any of these actions does not exempt them from legal proceedings. People will bring case after case,” he said.
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