The Safety of Rwanda Bill

Useful links, and a couple of comments.

Because there are already some excellent and authoritative analyses of the Safety of Rwanda Bill out there, I’m just going to link to them.

Joshua Rozenberg

Professor Mark Elliot

Tom Hickman KC (written in anticipation of the Bill).

I’ll just add a couple of thoughts.

First, the Prime Minister’s letter responding to Robert Jenrick contained this revealing and puzzling passage seeking to justify the Bill’s approach.

The Rwandan government have been clear that they would not accept the UK basing this scheme on legislation that could be considered in breach of our international law obligations.

That passage is revealing because it is a vivid demonstration of the core point I made in Unrealpolitik: that non-compliance with international law is often fantasy politics, because we need foreigners to achieve what we want to do.

But it is puzzling because - as the articles I link to all explain - the Bill produced so plainly “could be considered in breach of our international obligations”: indeed statement at the front that the Secretary of State does not believe that the Bill is consistent with the ECHR expressly concedes that point.

Second, there is no reason whatsoever why the House of Lords should accept any pressure either to hasten consideration of the Bill or to pass it. The Bill is not a manifesto commitment. It is designed to rescue an expensive strategy that has at best only a marginal impact on numbers. Indeed, to the extent to which the current government has had success in reducing small boat numbers it is by international cooperation that hasn’t involved depriving refugees of access to the courts - a point made in the Prime Minister’s letter. The real reason why this bill is urgent or even necessary is to allow Conservative candidates to put pictures of flights to Rwanda on their election leaflets as a lonely example of a government “success”: a point expressly made by Braverman in her Today programme interview today.

We need to stop the boats…the facts don’t lie, we need to deliver on a key promise, that’s how we win the next election…the time for talk, the time for slogans is over, we need to show delivery.

You can have a serious discussion about whether breaking international law, fundamental human rights, and the rule of law is justifiable in an existential crisis of the state. But the idea that any of those principles should be threatened, let alone openly broken, merely in the interests of helping the governing party gather a few more votes is not serious: it is having a laugh.