Airlines flying asylum seekers to Rwanda risk breaching human rights laws, UN experts warn – UK politics live | Politics

Airlines that fly asylum seekers to Rwanda on behalf of the UK government could be in breach of human rights laws, UN experts have warned.

The experts, who are all attached to the UN human rights council, issued a statement today arguing that airlines working for the government should be aware of the legal risk.

They said:

Even if the UK-Rwanda agreement and the ‘Safety of Rwanda’ bill are approved, airlines and aviation regulators could be complicit in violating internationally protected human rights and court orders by facilitating removals to Rwanda.

If airlines and aviation authorities give effect to state decisions that violate human rights, they must be held responsible for their conduct.

As the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights underline, aviation regulators, international organisations and business actors are required to respect human rights.

The three experts highlight the risk of asylum seekers being taken to Rwanda suffering “refoulement” – being returned to a country where they are at risk of persecution. The supreme court cited this risk as the reason why Rwanda was not a safe country in its judgment on the deportation policy last year. But the UK government claims its subsequent treaty with Rwanda has led to judicial reforms being enacted in Rwanda that mean the refoulement threat no longer applies.

The three UN figures who have issued the warning are: Siobhán Mullally, special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; Gehad Madi, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants; and Allice Jill Edwards, special rapporteur on torture.

For months journalists have been asking No 10 if the government has found a private company willing to provide planes to take asylum seekers to Rwanda. At his press conference today Rishi Sunak finally provided a clear answer (yes – see 10.45am) in an opening statement that contained quite a lot of detail intended to show that No 10 does think it can get regular flights leaving later this year and that it is not just planning the odd flight with a handful of passengers “here or there” (as Suella Braverman would put it – see 9.52am).

But, for all the facts and numbers he was able to deploy, Sunak could not quite cover up the fact that he was also confirming that he has failed in his goal of getting flights going in the spring – because they won’t leave until July. He blamed Labour peers, but this was not entirely convincing because peers say the bill was originally intended to get royal assent before Easter and that it was government’s decision to let “ping pong” drag on for so long. Sunak also refused to say how many asylum seekers the government expects to deport per flight, or before the election.

Given the Westminster obsession with election timing, Sunak’s comments will also be scrutinised for any clues they offer on this. During the Q&A he dodged a question about whether the flights timetable meant he was ruling out a July election. (See 10.50am.) At one point it was argued that, in relation to Rwanda, the Tories would be best off holding an election once the bill has passed, or once the first flight has left, but before the policy has had time to fail (which will be the verdict if small boat arrival numbers show that it is not working as a deterrent). Sunak did not engage with this argument, but he did not sound like someone planning a rush to the polls in July. What he said to the BBC’s Chris Mason (see 11.15am) was probably more consistent with October or November still being the working assumption (provided the Conservative party does not self-destruct after the local elections).

Here are the main points.

• Sunak said the first flight to Rwanda “will leave in 10 to 12 weeks” – confirming that he has abandoned his goal of ensuring deportations start in the spring. The new timetable means July (1 July is 10 weeks from today). After that there will be “multiple” flights leaving regularly every month, Sunak said. But he declined to say how many people he expected to be one the first flight.

• He refused to say if the new timetable meant he was ruling out a July election. As Jason Groves from the Daily Mail says, his comments seemed to confirm the autumn as the most likely time for the election.

• Sunak said Rwanda was ready to implement the policy too, and he said the Rwandan president, Paul Kigame, was “completely committed” to it. (See 11.15am.)

• Sunak said the UK would not need to leave the European court of human rights to implement the Rwanda policy, but he indicated he would be willing to leave if ECHR membership was a threat to national security. (See 10.48am.) This is a line he used recently in a Sun interview. Suella Braverman has said that, if this is meant to be a hint that he would be willing to withdraw, it’s phoney.

• Sunak said that he continued to have confidence in the Met police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, but that that was conditional upon Rowley working to rebuild the trust of the Jewish community and the public at large. (See 10.55am.)

Sunak take his final question – from the BBC.

Normally at No 10 press conferences the BBC political editor gets called first, in recognition of the fact that he or she is normally seen as the most influential journalist in the lobby. Maybe people are being called in random order today, but at Westminster there will be suspicions that this is a discreet snub that will go down will with anti-BBC Tories.

Q: [From Chris Mason] You are accepting that your initial promise, to get flights off in the spring, won’t happen. Can you be certain that, by the time of the election, you will be able to prove this policy is working as a deterrent?

Sunak says he won’t add to what he has said already about the timing of the election. (See 10.50am.)

He says the delay has been caused by Labour consistently blocking the policy.

But the government has worked to make sure this will work, he says. For example, in the past poor decision making has held up asylum decisions. That is why more people have been trained.

He says the government could “rush” and get one flight off. He goes on:

But that’s not the priority. The priority is being able to deliver a regular rhythm, a drumbeat of multiple flights a month, over the summer and beyond. Because that’s how you build a systematic deterrent and that’s how you’ll stop the boats.

That is the system he is putting in place, Sunak says.

Q: Do you have confidence in the Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley?

Sunak says he shares the “shock and anger” felt by people who saw the video clip of how a police officer told Gideon Falter that being “openly Jewish” was provocative when he was in London near a pro-Palestinian demonstration.

He says the police do a difficult job, and he does have confidence in Rowley. He goes on:

But that’s on the basis that he works to rebuild the confidence and trust of, not just the Jewish community, but the wider public, particularly people in London but more broadly.

And you regain that trust … by making it clear that the police are not tolerating behaviour that we would all collectively deem unacceptable when we see it because it undermines our values.

He says James Cleverly, the home secretary, is meeting Rowley to discuss this issue today.

UPDATE: Sunak said:

I share the shock and the anger that many are feeling when they saw the clips over the weekend.

And you know what I would say about Mark Rowley and the police, they do have a difficult job, of course I appreciate that.

But what happened was clearly wrong. And it’s right that they’ve apologised for that.

And yes, I do have confidence in him, but that’s on the basis that he works to rebuild the confidence and trust of not just the Jewish community, but the wider public, particularly people in London but more broadly.

And you regain that trust and that confidence by making it clear that the police are not tolerating behaviour that we would all collectively deem unacceptable when we see it because it undermines our values.

And I think that is critical. And I know the home secretary will be meeting the commissioner later today.

Q: Does this mean you are ruling out a summer election?

Sunak says he has already said what he has said on the date of the election.

(He has said that his working assumption is that it will be in the second half of the year. Normally that is taken to mean October o November, but July is in the second half of the year too.)

Q: Do you think you will be able to implement this without leaving the European convention of human rights?

Sunak says he thinks he can implement this without leaving the ECHR.

But he says he is willing to ignore ECHR injunctions if he needs to.

And, if he ever has to make a choice between national security and membership of a foreign court, he would put national security first.

UPDATE: Sunak said:

If it ever comes to a choice between our national security, securing our borders, and membership of a foreign court, I’m, of course, always going to prioritise our national security.

Sunak says the government envisages “the successful delivery of multiple flights a month through the summer and beyond until the boats have stopped”.

Rishi Sunak starts by blaming Labour peers in the Lords for blocking the Rwanda bill.

But he says tonight parliament will sit for as long as it takes to pass the bill.

He says the governments has started work on preparation for flights to Rwanda to take off.

And he gives details of what that means:

• 2,200 extra detention spaces have been made available, and 200 dedicated case workers have been taken on.

• The judiciary has made 25 court rooms available to hear these cases, and there are 150 judges available who could provide 5,000 sitting days.

• The European court of human rights has tightened its rules on injunctions, making it harder for claimaints to get one to stop a deportation flight. And the Rwanda bill says ministers can ignore those injunctions anyway, he says.

Sunak says, with these preparations in place, he expects the first flights to leave in 10 to 12 weeks.

That suggests flights starting in July – which is summer. Sunak initially said the first flights would leave in the spring.

UPDATE: Sunak said:

To detain people while we prepare to remove them, we’ve increased detention spaces to 2,200. To quickly process claims, we’ve got 200 trained, dedicated caseworkers ready and waiting.

To deal with any legal cases quickly and decisively, the judiciary have made available 25 courtrooms and identified 150 judges who could provide over 5,000 sitting days.

The Strasbourg court has amended their rule 39 procedures in line with the test set out in our Illegal Migration Act. And we’ve put beyond all doubt that ministers can disregard these injunctions with clear guidance that if they decide to do so, civil servants must deliver that instruction and most importantly, once the processing is complete, we will physically remove people.

And to do that, I can confirm that we’ve put an airfield on standby, booked commercial charter planes for specific slots and we have 500 highly trained individuals ready to escort illegal migrants all the way to Rwanda, with 300 more trained in the coming weeks.

This is one of the most complex operational endeavours the Home Office has carried out. But we are ready, plans are in place and these flights will go, come what may.

No foreign court will stop us from getting flights off.

The first flight will leave in 10 to 12 weeks. Now of course that is later than we wanted.

But we have always been clear that processing will take time and if Labour peers had not spent weeks holding up the bill in the House of Lords to try to block these flights altogether, we would have begun this process weeks ago.

Sky News has broadcast a clip of Rishi Sunak addressing a meeting of the government’s illegal migration operations committee in the cabinet room at No 10 this morning. It is almost certainly a preview of what he will say at the press conference, which is due to start within the next hour.

And Sunak is making a big claim, arguing that the Rwanda bill marks a “fundamental change” in global policy on illegal migration.

Sunak said:

After months of back and forth, it is now time for the house to pass our Rwanda legislation. No more prevarication, no more delay.

And, in doing this, parliament will put beyond all doubt that Rwanda is a safe country …

I believe that this is landmark legislation. It doesn’t just represent a step-change in how we do this, but actually a fundamental change on the global equation on how to tackle illegal migration.

And, so voting this bill through parliament today, we collectively can send a very clear message that if you come here illegally, you won’t be able to stay.

There may be an element of truth in Sunak’s claim about the significance of the bill, although it does cut across the government’s insistence that it is only following a policy already championed by Australia, and it will only be seen to be landmark legislation if it works. Many people, like Suella Braverman (see 9.52am), assume it won’t.

Suellla Braverman, the former Conservative home secretary, restated her belief this morning that the government’s Rwanda bill won’t work. Braverman, who was sacked by Rishi Sunak partly because they disagreed over immigration policy, told the Today progamme:

Unfortunately I voted against the legislation because I think it’s fatally flawed. I don’t think it’s going to stop the boats, and that’s the test of its efficacy.

Braverman said all the government’s attempts to tackle illegal migration were being thwarted by human rights law.

The simple fact is this is our third Act of Parliament that the government has introduced in four years to stop the boats.

None of them have worked – none of them have worked because they are all still susceptible to the international human rights law framework contained in the European convention on human rights judged by, and adjudicated by, the European court of human rights in Strasbourg – that’s the problem, and that’s why I’ve been calling for a few years now to leave the European convention on human rights.

At the Conservative party conference in October 2022 Braverman famously said that it was her “dream” to see the first flight take off to Rwanda because she thought the policy would have a deterrent effect. She said:

I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.

But this morning she revealed that she has revised hew view since then. When the Today presenter Mishal Husain reminded her of her “dream” comment, and asked if she would congratulate the PM when the first flight took off, Braverman replied:

The prime minister has pledged to stop the boats. That’s what we owe the British people and that’s the test. I’m afraid this bill, as drafted, will not achieve that goal. It’s fatally flawed …

One flight here or there, with a few passengers on it, will not provide the deterrent effect that is necessary to break the people smuggling gangs, to send the message to the illegal migrants that it’s not worth getting on a dinghy in the first place because you’re not going to get a life in the UK.

We need to have regular flights going to Rwanda with large numbers of passengers on them. That’s the only way to stop the boats.

In his Today interview Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign secretary, also claimed that Rwanda was “arguably safer than London”.

He said the country had made remarkable progress over the past 30 years. He explained:

Rwanda … has come back from the abyss, a country completely destroyed by the genocide.

It is absolutely extraordinary what the Rwandan government have achieved in all walks of life.

It is a safe country and indeed, if you look at the statistics, Kigali is arguably safer than London. So I have no doubt at all about the safety of Rwanda and the efficacy of this scheme.

When it was put to him that the Rwandan police opened fire on refugees in the country who were protesting in 2018, Mitchell said this “remarkable regime” had managed to look after “extraordinary numbers of refugees”.

He said the 2018 shooting was a “contested incident”.

And he said the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, placed refugees in Rwanda.

If the UNHCR thinks it’s right and proper and safe to do that, then I think we should be perfectly confident that the British government, in reaching the same conclusion, is also correct.

Mitchell has had a close involvement with Rwanda for years. In 2007, as shadow international development secretary, he launched a volunteering project in the country for Conservative activists, Project Umubano, which helped to change the party’s stance on development issues.

In his Today programme interview Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign secretary, suggested that Rishi Sunak would use his press conference later to say how many people the government expects to sent to Rwanda later this year.

Mitchell said he was confident that the policy would have a deterrent effect on the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats. Asked ‘what kinds of numbers” the government was envisaging, Mitchell replied:

You’ll have to wait for the prime minister to set that out in the press conference later today.

Mitchell also implied Rishi Sunak would reveal what aircraft will be used to send people to Rwanda. Originally ministers were hoping to hire an aircraft from a commercial airline, but reportedly RAF planes may be used instead because private companies do not want to get involved.

Mitchell said it was for Sunak to set out “the robust operational arrangments which we have made to implement the will of the House of Commons”.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak has decided that that the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill must complete its passage through parliament tonight and he is holding a press conference later this morning partly so that he can publicly warn the peers who are holding up the bill that it is time to back down. But, as Pippa Crerar reports, peers are still holding out for concessions, particularly on that which would exempt Afghanistan interpreters and others who have worked for British forces abroad from the threat of deportation to Rwanda.

MPs and peers have told that they could be in for a long night. Both sides accept that the Lords will eventually let the Commons have its way, but peers are entitled to ask MPs to “think again” and, for political reasons, they will want to show that they have fought hard to get their way. That’s why it looks as though it might be a late night; if peers aren’t still up after midnight, people won’t be convinced that they were really trying.

Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign secretary, told the Today programme this morning that the government is not minded to compromise. Speaking about the Lords amendment that would exempt Afghan interpreters from deportation to Rwanda, he said this was not necessary because the government already has other schemes in place to enable those Afghans to come to the UK. He told the programme:

After the Afghan was was over, we set up a safe and legal route for those Afghans who had served the British Army, served Britain, the Arap (Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy) scheme, and 16,000 Afghans have been settled in Britain as a result. For that reason, we simply don’t think this amendment is necessarily … We’re not in the business of cluttering up the statute book with unnecessary legislation.

And Mitchell was even more critical of the Lords on the second issue on which they are digging in their heels – the Lord Hope amendment that would ensure that Rwanda is not treated as a safe country for refugees until the monitoring committee set up by the government confirms it is safe. Mitchell said that peers were being too harsh about the Rwandan judiciary and that some of what had been said was borderline racist. He told the programme:

I’ve listened to what has been said about the independence of the judiciary [in Rwanda], the judicial arrangements that have been set up on Rwanda. The Rwandan judge, Judge Rugege, is an enormously distinguished and respected international jurist. Indeed, he is an honorary fellow in law at an Oxford College.

Some of the discussions that have gone on in the Lord’s about the judicial arrangements within Rwanda have been patronising and, in my view, border on racism.

So we don’t think it’s necessary to have that amendment either, and that the necessary structures are in place to ensure that the scheme works properly and fairly.

Morning: Rishi Sunak holds a press conference in Downing Street.

Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit in the West Midlands, where he is chairing a shadow cabinet meeting.

2.30pm: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: MPs debate the latest Lords amendments to the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill.

Early evening: Peers debate the Rwanda bill again. If, as expected, they insist on their amendments, “ping pong” will continue and the bill will return to the Commons for another vote by MPs. The process could continue into the early hours.

Also, David Cameron, the foreign secretary, is on a visit to Tajikistan.

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