The government of the United Kingdom has revealed that it was in the ‘final stages’ of negotiating a new treaty with Rwanda, the immigration minister has confirmed.
Robert Jenrick said it was ‘absolutely critical that flights go off to Rwanda in the spring’.
He was speaking after the UK Supreme Court ruled the government’s flagship asylum policy was unlawful.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asserted that the new treaty would protect against the removal of asylum seekers from Rwanda back to their home country.
In their ruling, the Supreme Court justices said there were ‘substantial grounds’ to believe people deported to Rwanda could then be sent, by the Rwandan government, to places where they would be unsafe.
Speaking after the ruling, Mr Sunak said he was determined to ‘end the merry-go-round’ of legal challenges.
Mr Jenrick, meanwhile, said he was “confident” that the government will be able to see flights take off to Rwanda next year.
The treaty and emergency legislation will ‘determine Rwanda as a safe country and ensure that the endless cycle of legal disputes and challenges finally comes to an end’, he told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
But legal heads are being scratched as to how the emergency legislation might work.
Declaring a country safe is not the same as proving to a court that it genuinely is – as the Supreme Court has shown.
The controversial plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda and ban them from returning to the UK – which has already cost at least £140m – has been subject to court challenges since it was first announced by Boris Johnson in April 2022.
No asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda. The first flight was scheduled to go in June 2022 but was cancelled after an intervention from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The latest ruling from the Supreme Court – the highest court in the UK – determined that the plan in its current form was unlawful.
Addressing reporters at a Downing Street press conference, Mr Sunak said the new treaty and emergency legislation would address concerns and confirm Rwanda was a safe country.
But he said the plan could face further challenges from the ECHR.