Priti Patel’s Rwanda plan is even worse than it seems

This is not offshore processing, it is a one-way ticket to Kigali, writes John Rentoul

Priti Patel’s difficulty has been to find somewhere that would accept asylum-seekers, but now she has not only found somewhere, she has changed the policy (Getty Images)

I thought it was a bit strange when Priti Patel, the home secretary, said, “Australia is not comparable”, at the news conference in Kigali where she announced the deal with Rwanda to take asylum seekers from the UK.

Everyone knew that the Australian policy of dealing with asylum claims “offshore”, that is, outside Australia, in camps in Nauru, Christmas Island and Papua New Guinea, was the inspiration for Patel’s plan. Australia has succeeded in stopping people from arriving by boat and claiming asylum.

This has been achieved partly by turning back the boats in international waters, which Britain cannot do in the Channel because there are only French and British waters, and the dinghies trying to cross are unseaworthy and therefore unsafe to turn around. Partly, though, Australia has succeeded by deterrence: by processing asylum claims offshore.

Patel’s difficulty has been to find somewhere that would accept asylum seekers. Now she has not only found somewhere, but she has also changed the policy. This left opponents arguing against what they thought the policy was rather than what it now is. Opinion pollsters carried out surveys asking people what they thought of what the policy was expected to be – processing asylum claims offshore. Radio phone-ins discussed the merits of a non-existent policy.

It took a while even for experts to understand what Patel meant by Australia not being comparable. At some point in the Home Office’s desperate search for a way to stop the small boats coming across the Channel, someone seems to have had a eureka moment. They realised that it might be possible to deport arrivals without assessing their claim for asylum at all.

The plan is not to set up a centre abroad in which claims for asylum in the UK will be processed, but to send people to Rwanda, where they can claim asylum in Rwanda if they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country. This is possible, Patel claims, because anyone arriving in the UK from France by an unauthorised route will be deemed automatically ineligible for asylum – on the ground that they have travelled through a safe country to get here.

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Such a policy has never been tested in law because until now there has been no third country willing to take people on these terms.

This is not offshore processing, it is a one-way ticket to Rwanda – where people will be “given the opportunity to begin a new life in that dynamic country”, as Boris Johnson put it when he announced the policy in his speech in Kent on Thursday. The British government will pay the Rwandan government to support people for a while after their arrival, but they will no longer be the UK’s responsibility.

It is an unusual policy, and unlikely to be allowed by the courts, but it is not what most people thought it was – it is even less acceptable to the opponents of offshore processing such as Conservative former cabinet ministers David Davis and Andrew Mitchell.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator