The Rwanda plan was doomed from the start – and there is no credible plan B

Editorial: The prime minister wasting his time trying – and failing – to bring the Rwanda plan back to life is not going to help him, or the country

(Dave Brown)

If the Rwanda plan was “plan A” to help stop the boats, and has now been ruled unlawful, what is “plan B”?

The answer would appear to be “plan A”. Clinging to the few words in the Supreme Court judgment that were vaguely positive for the government, Rishi Sunak has doubled down on the Rwanda policy, and has dedicated himself to making the doomed project viable.

He has indulged in what Suella Braverman has called “magical thinking”, and now promises to bring forward “extraordinary emergency legislation” to declare that Rwanda is safe because he says so, and that flights to Africa will begin in the spring. A new treaty will be ready shortly. He said, again, that he would “do what’s necessary” to implement the scheme and “stop the boats”.

He is likely to be disappointed. Absent a withdrawal from the international conventions on human rights, passing a new domestic law cannot change the binding framework of international law. The Supreme Court’s judgment stands, and will stand again if need be. It is not a “foreign court” that is stopping him, but the highest British court.

As they proceeded to render the Rwanda plan null and void, the most powerful judges in the land were kind enough to acknowledge that the principle of deporting refugees to be processed and possibly granted asylum abroad isn’t unlawful in itself – provided they’d be treated fairly, under international law, in a safe environment. The problem – and a rather fundamental one – is that Rwanda is not a safe country, at least so far as the Supreme Court is concerned. To make it a safer country, as Mr Sunak intends, will take time, and realistically a new treaty with Rwanda could not be completed before the next general election. It is futile.

That reality poses some uncomfortable questions. If it was so obvious to the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeal before it, that Rwanda was not a safe country, why was this not noticed by ministers and officials over the last year of legal proceedings? Indeed, why was this not thoroughly investigated and resolved before Boris Johnson and Priti Patel agreed the migration and economic development partnership (MEDP) wth Rwanda in April last year?

The evidence provided by the UN High Commission for Refugees regarding the Rwandan authorities’ record on asylum wasn’t a state secret. It’s mostly in the public domain, and easily discoverable. The agreement between Rwanda and Israel had not worked; refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Libya had been discriminated against; and the country suffers from weak human rights generally. It is not “snobby”, as Ms Patel used to say, to object to such shortcomings. They are matters of fact, even if inconvenient. The Rwanda plan was always a bad idea.

Either Mr Johnson and Ms Patel failed to ensure that due diligence was conducted before they signed up to the MEDP, or else they were aware of the problems in Rwanda but pressed on regardless. Neither suggests that the policy was being pursued with sufficient solicitude. The suspicion is that the Rwanda plan was always something of an eye-catching initiative to suggest that something dramatic was being done about irregular migration, but with no great confidence that it would act as a serious deterrent.

At best, it was an experiment; at worst, a cynical device to deceive a concerned public. Mr Sunak and Ms Braverman inherited the policy, but it was their choice to continue with it, and indeed to pledge to “do whatever it takes” to make it work.

It is disappointing that Mr Sunak still seems to think the Rwanda plan is salvageable, and has kept it as such a central part of his policy. It is unlawful, after all, and will take years to fix. Even if he changed British law to override international refugee and human rights conventions, the UK government would still be under an obligation to honour its international commitments. It is nonsense to pretend otherwise.

At any rate, this failed project has cost the taxpayer perhaps £140m (the finances have not been entirely transparent) and has made minimal impact on the flow of refugees across the English Channel. This is consonant with common sense. For a Sudanese or Iranian family who would risk their lives to get across the Mediterranean and then the English Channel, the minuscule risk of being sent to Rwanda is a minor inconvenience.

If it was ever going to operate as a deterrent, it would have had to be far more ambitious and far harsher than even the scheme as planned. That, of course, would have been even more detrimental to the legally protected human rights of the individuals concerned, be they genuine or not. The policy made no logical sense.

The prime minister says he’ll pass new laws and defy the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and other international treaties as well as the UK laws that have driven the Supreme Court judgment, but that sounds very much like an attempt to talk tough and save face. Few think he is about to withdraw from the ECHR.

It has been obvious for some time, as Ms Braverman was keen to point out publicly, that the ECHR was an insuperable obstacle to the Rwanda plan, and that the only logical solution was to opt out. Mr Sunak never displayed enthusiasm for doing that. To do so would, apart from anything else, mean “revisiting” (ie renegotiating) the Good Friday Agreement and the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement (ie the Brexit treaty), in which the ECHR is embedded. It would also mean resigning from various United Nations conventions. So nothing will come of it.

When Mr Sunak became prime minister a little over a year ago, he promised that the government he was about to lead “will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”. He has been a huge improvement on his predecessors, and enjoyed some notable successes, such as supporting the Bank of England in getting inflation down. He can also point to the Windsor Framework and a welcome reset in relations with the EU and the White House.

But too often, the prime minister – along with the ministers he appointed – has fallen short of the high standards he set himself. He certainly had an unhappy inheritance, but he held his destiny in his hands. He still does, and talk of leadership challenges is overdone; but the time he has to recover is short.

Wasting his time on trying – and failing – to bring the Rwanda plan back to life is not going to help him, or the country.