'Major blow' for Rishi Sunak as Rwanda deportation policy ruled unlawful

Rishi Sunak has been dealt a major blow in his efforts to "stop the boats" after the Supreme Court ruled his Rwanda deportation policy unlawful. 

In a unanimous ruling, the five top justices at the Supreme Court said the Court of Appeal had been right to conclude in June that there were "substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at real risk of refoulement" – sending people back to their home countries – where they faced persecution or inhumane treatment, in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). 

The government had argued that Rwanda had given veritable diplomatic assurances that anyone sent there from the UK would be treated fairly and humanely. But in what the BBC's home and legal correspondent Dominic Casciani called "a key intervention in the case", the UN's refugee agency said there was "no evidence Rwanda had improved its treatment of asylum seekers".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The decision represents "a major blow for the prime minister", said the Daily Telegraph, as Sunak has made the Rwanda scheme "a central plank in his pledge to 'stop the boats' by deterring migrants from making further crossings".

The government is now thought to be drawing up a Plan B with ministers "expected to order a rewrite of the agreement with Rwanda", added the paper. However, Sunak "will face major pressure from right-wing Tory MPs to take more radical action" such as leaving the ECHR, said The Times.

It was the failure to "prepare any sort of credible 'Plan B'" that former home secretary Suella Braverman lamented, in her excoriating letter to the prime minister after she was sacked, in which she claimed Sunak had dodged "hard decisions" on how to "stop the boats". Braverman said a Supreme Court loss would mean a "wasted" year and leave the Government "back at square one."