There was never much of a chance that the Government’s cruel plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda would be found lawful. And this morning, the Supreme Court announced that it was unlawful.
But the Government in general and successive home secretaries in particular must have known that. And yet still they chose to blow what was probably millions of public money on pursuing this through the Courts as part of their culture war.
For some, though, at the sharp end of this policy, so much harm has already been done. I can only imagine the fear felt by those on the first flight, which was only halted minutes before it was due to take off last June. They will never forget what they went through.
Alistair Carmichael, our Home Affairs Spokesperson said:
It was clear from the get-go that the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme was destined to fail. Not only is it immoral, unworkable and incredibly costly for taxpayers – but the Supreme Court has confirmed that it’s unlawful too.
So much time and money has already been wasted. It’s time for James Cleverly to get serious and get on with fixing the broken asylum system.
Tackling the sky-high asylum backlog and creating safe and legal routes for sanctuary will make far more progress towards that than this pet project policy ever could.
Welsh Lib Dem Leader Jane Dodds said:
Thank goodness the @UKSupremeCourt
have came to their senses and ruled this inhumane policy illegal.The #Tory Government should be ashamed of themselves for even thinking of something as awful as this
Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton also welcomed the judgement:
Good. And it shows our democratic structures are functioning when the Judiciary strike down unlawful decisions of the Executive branch of government.
This was always an odious policy. The Tory Government punching down on the vulnerable and dispossessed.
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* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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9 Comments
“Tackling the sky-high asylum backlog and creating safe and legal routes for sanctuary will make far more progress towards that than this pet project policy ever could.”
Quite.
Worth watching this:-https://www.timloughton.com/news/my-question-home-secretary-safe-and-legal-routes-23-november-2022
No straight answer as to a legal route for those who don’t come from a few specific countries and who don’t have passports so can’t get on planes or ferries.
And it was a tory MP asking!
It was always doomed to failure once the legal arguments started – a policy to try and mask the disastrous Tory immigration record , which is high on rhetoric but with little substance…
Having said that net migration at the current levels is not sustainable…Isn’t it awful ain’t going to cut it on voters doorstep next year – many of whom want asylum seekers returned forthwith ….
The simple fact here is that the Conservatives have wasted another £140m of British taxpayers’ money because they haven’t got a clue what to do. Time and again they identify so called problems and tell us how great things will be once they have solved them – £350m a week for the NHS anyone – but always fail to allow for the fact that Tory bluff and bluster is no cure for rank incompetence and stupidity.
The British people are well aware of this. The question for us is how do we make this into the killer issue that leads to us gaining the 40 or so seats we need to make sure they lose the next election?
Better than expected. It was obviously in breach of Euorpean human rights law but the judges found at least three British laws it was in breach of too. There is now no way they can get anyone on a plane before the general election.
And the AA man who rescued me very efficiently at the weekrnd told me that he had been an illegal migrant who had got the right to stay in the UK. The answer is to process these migrants claims much more quickly and get them earning a good living. Then you wouldn’t have so many holed up on hotels.
Humm… stage set for a Tory led reform of the UK legal system bandwagon as it is obviously become corrupt and filled with Liberals…
Yes this was a waste of public money, but I am sure the Tory party will find something to use in their coming general election campaign…
I listened carefully to the Supreme Court’s judgement yesterday and as far as I can see they said that Rwanda was not a safe place for asylum seekers regardless of any treaty that might be signed, because, according to UNHCR Rwanda doesn’t stick to treaties anyway and secretly moves asylum seekers to Uganda from where they can be sent back. Also, there is a100% rejection rate of asylum applications and the right of appeal is never exercised. They also went out of their way to say that this had little to do with the Human Rights Act. Yet within a couple of hours Sunak was saying that they just had to change a few things, sign a new treaty and bingo, flights could start. What is it he doesn’t understand about Rwanda is not a safe place for asylum seekers? Does he really believe that Parliament can just declare Rwanda a safe place and that will make it so? Apparently he does. His sideswipe about foreign courts is yet another sign of the direction he will take when the GE finally comes.
A statement I completely agree with. Sadly we don’t have a worthy process for dealing with asylum seekers here now or with the numbers expected over the next year or the increasing numbers expected as wider world becomes more dangerous through mix of climate change and “strongmen” leaders.
Over the past year we’ve refused to create safe modes of entry and have home the asylum seekers who do reach us in old army bases with terrible conditions, on boats with terrible conditions or in hotels often in smaller and poorer communities which robs said communities of local jobs.
The majority of claimants are found to have right to legal safety here because of the terrible conditions around the world – something we play a role in with walking away from proposed actions on climate change and selling of weapons to certain regimes.
But we’re not building enough houses and the houses we do build are of poor quality, and our plans to invest in improving public transport fail major Cities like Bradford and nations like Wales, then we can’t complete these improvements anyway, so innocent people enter into a charged atmosphere.
Why are the organising gangs of the people smuggling, if they are making so much money, not being picked up by the tax authoring the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands. If they are laundering the money why are the banks not picking up on this ?