the independent view

Let this tragedy in the Channel be the death knell of the Rwanda policy

Editorial: Does Rishi Sunak really believe his callous new law will deter desperate people, stop the boats and prevent another tragedy? He must think again

Tuesday 23 April 2024 20:22 BST
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The Rwanda scheme is expensive and it will not work. It will do nothing to prevent the next tragedy
The Rwanda scheme is expensive and it will not work. It will do nothing to prevent the next tragedy (PA)

We should start by seeing the latest tragedy in the Channel through the eyes of the victims, in order to understand what drives people to take such risks on unseaworthy dinghies. It should be obvious that such people are not going to be deterred by the remote prospect of being removed to Rwanda.

So when the prime minister talks about “compassion”, we can accept that his policy would be compassionate if it worked. But it is not going to work. Indeed, it is unlikely even to be given the chance, because the Labour Party has promised to stop the flights, even if they have started by the time it forms the next government. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, confirmed on Tuesday that the removals will cease immediately if Labour is elected.

We suspect that Rishi Sunak knows the Rwanda policy will not work, but wants the flights to take off before the election to give him a dividing line.

At his news conference on Monday, he argued that the “relentless, continual process of successfully and permanently removing people to Rwanda” would act as a deterrent over time. But the five deaths in the Channel, including that of a seven-year-old child crushed on the overcrowded boat, underline the simple point that if desperate people are not deterred by the risk of death, they are not going to be put off by a smaller chance that they will end up in Rwanda.

There are no easy solutions to the small boats problem, but there is one plan that definitely will not work, and that is the one the prime minister inherited from Boris Johnson.

Mr Sunak doubted that the Rwanda scheme would be value for money when he was chancellor, but when he was thrown into a leadership election in which the votes were held by a highly unrepresentative sample of the British people, he felt forced to adopt it as his own. This was a sign of weakness, and it was a distraction from the search for more effective policies – that is to say, policies that would be at all effective.

Mr Sunak should look, instead, at creating safe and legal routes for people seeking asylum in the UK. When he talks about the unfairness of migrants jumping the queue, his audience nod in agreement, but the critical fact is that there is no queue.

There is no official procedure for seeking asylum. If such a route were opened, the government says it would quickly be oversubscribed, and that those unable to gain access to it would still find themselves on French beaches trying to fight their way onto unsuitable boats in the early morning darkness. Maybe so, but it might relieve some of the pressure.

It should, in any case, form part of a wider strategy of greater cooperation with the French authorities and a Europe-wide approach to migration. The government argues that Labour’s policy, which is broadly along these lines, would mean that the UK would have to accept its share of EU asylum seekers – as if this would be a terrible thing.

It is absurd that Mr Sunak’s government can suggest it would be unacceptable to take a few thousand genuine refugees when the net immigration figure for work, study and family reunion last year was 700,000. The legal immigration numbers make the prime minister’s obsession with the smaller numbers coming across the Channel hard to understand – except as a distraction tactic.

This government’s asylum and immigration policy has been an inconsistent mess, and the price has been paid by desperate people in the cold, dark waters of the Channel. On the very morning that the government forced its Rwanda deportation bill through a reluctant parliament, it is a bitter irony that more lives should have been lost.

The Rwanda scheme is expensive, and it will not work. It will do nothing to prevent the next tragedy. That is why The Independent adds its voice to that of the United Nations in opposition to the Rwanda plan – and urges the prime minister to think again.

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