The Rwanda bill passes: is it really 'game-changer'?

After a protracted round of parliamentary "ping pong", peers finally approved the Government's Rwanda bill on Monday night, clearing the way for it to become law. 

The legislation instructs judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country for asylum seekers. This will prevent migrants from challenging their deportation on the basis of general claims about Rwanda's safety, although they will still be able to appeal on the grounds that there is "compelling evidence" that the country is unsafe for them owing to their individual circumstances.

Rishi Sunak hailed the bill as a "game-changer" for tackling irregular migration, and said nothing would now prevent the Government from getting deportation flights to Rwanda off the ground by the end of July. So far this year, more than 6,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats. On Tuesday, five people, including a seven-year-old girl, died while attempting to do so. The PM said the tragedy underscored the need for his plan, which he claims will destroy the business model of the criminal gangs who traffic migrants. Labour branded the scheme an "extortionately expensive gimmick".

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An 'egregious' piece of legislation

"The planes have been chartered, an airfield is ready, border staff are standing by, and the first deportees have been identified," said The Daily Telegraph. Pending legal challenges, the Rwanda plan can at last be put into action. It's about time. The public's patience with Channel crossings is wearing thin. It has taken two years, four home secretaries and three acts of parliament to get here, said The Independent. Yet even if the Rwanda flights do now go ahead, there's little prospect of them providing the promised "systemic deterrent". If desperate people are willing to risk their lives on overcrowded boats, they're hardly going to be put off by the very remote chance they'll end up in Rwanda.

This is an "egregious" piece of legislation, said the FT. In addition to being cruel and unlikely to deliver the desired effect, it sets a "pernicious precedent for British democracy". The bill declares that Rwanda is safe and that judges must simply accept this fact, despite the Supreme Court having previously found otherwise. "Britain's political settlement has long rested on the premise that Parliament is sovereign but accepts the courts' role in holding it to account – and does not attempt to usurp that function. The Rwanda bill undermines that settlement."

A challenge for Labour too

Getting this bill on the books will be a "big moment" for Sunak, said Kate McCann in The i Paper. For the Tory leadership, it has come to be seen as the answer to all of the party's electoral woes. It isn't. Voters do care about immigration, but this isn't a policy that they'll "feel in their everyday lives – important if you want to take credit for it come election day". Voters will be worried about the high cost of the policy, and will likely be sceptical about its effectiveness. The irony is that Sunak reportedly felt exactly the same way about this policy when Boris Johnson launched it two years ago. If only he'd followed his instincts. This "victory" won't do much good for Sunak's standing with either voters or his own MPs, agreed Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. "It may well be a symbolic win. But it's just not clear what it's symbolic of."

Few think that the Rwanda scheme will work, said Patrick O'Flynn in The Spectator. Nigel Farage predicted this week that nobody will ever be deported under it. That has set Sunak "a very low bar for proving him wrong". By repeatedly announcing its intention to abolish the scheme, whether or not it's working, Labour has also given the PM a handy get-out, said Tom Harris in The Daily Telegraph. If the policy fails to reduce the number of attempted Channel crossings, he will, "with some justification, be able to place at least some of the blame on Labour for fatally undermining the scheme's purpose". 

Labour needs to tread carefully when it comes to this issue, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. Finding faults with Government plans is part of the Opposition's job, but as the next general election draws closer, more attention will inevitably turn to the question of how Keir Starmer's party would deal with illegal Channel crossings. Labour's standard answer is that it would tackle the problem "upstream" by ensuring more coastguards, better intelligence and liaison with Interpol, but this has the "ring of wishful thinking". There's a reason why Germany, Italy and Austria are also seeking third-country solutions to the problem of irregular immigration. "The Rwanda plan legacy will haunt the next government, not just the one that dreamt it up."

What happens next?

The Government is expected to begin detaining migrants in removal centres in the coming days, reports The Times. Officials have identified 150 people who are considered "legally watertight cases". Sunak said 25 courtrooms and 150 judges had been earmarked to deal with expected legal challenges. The civil service union FDA is likely to launch a judicial review next week, arguing that ministers' new power to disregard interim rulings from the European Court of Human Rights would mean telling civil servants to break international law.

The UK hopes to replicate the Rwanda plan elsewhere. Talks are said to be under way with Armenia, Botswana and Ivory Coast.