UK Politics

Voters oppose Boris Johnson’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, a snap poll has suggested.The YouGov survey, conducted within hours of the prime minister’s confirmation of the £120m scheme, found that 42 per cent of those questioned oppose it against just 35 per cent who were supportive.But the plan was much more popular among Conservative voters, with 39 per cent giving it “strong” backing and 20 per cent saying that they “tend to support” it, for a total of 59 per cent, against just 22 per cent who were opposed.Removals to the African country were overwhelmingly rejected by Labour voters, by a margin of 68 to15 per cent, by Remain supporters (59 to 18 per cent) and Liberal Democrats (65 to 21 per cent). But they were backed by Brexit supporters by 57 per cent to 23.YouGov asked: “The government has proposed a deal where some people who have entered Britain and applied for asylum will be flown to Rwanda, in Africa, for their asylum applications to be processed. Do you support or oppose this proposal?”The findings suggest that the policy has more chance of helping to shore up Mr Johnson’s position among existing supporters than to attract voters from other parties.However they indicate that the PM’s tough line on immigration may pay dividends in the former Labour strongholds in the Red Wall of the Midlands and north of England which delivered his 80-seat majority in 2019.It was in these areas that support for the policy was strongest – with 39 per cent backing in the Midlands and Wales and 37 per cent in the North, though in both regions supporters were outnumbered by the 40 per cent who were opposed. More

Boris Johnson has confirmed plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, saying that in future migrants using illegal routes to “jump the queue” will be “swiftly and humanely removed to a third country or their country of origin”. Mr Johnson rejected accusations that the plan, which could see tens of thousands of people flown to the central African state over the next few years, was “draconian and lacking in compassion”.But his announcement was dismissed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer as a “desperate” bid by the prime minister to “distract from his own law breaking” two days after being fined for breaching Covid laws at a Downing Street party.Declaring Labour’s opposition to the PM’s plans, Sir Keir said: “They are unworkable, they are extortionate, they are going to cost taxpayers billions of pounds. And they just reflect that the prime minister has got no grip, no answers to the questions that need answering and no shame.”In a speech near the Channel ports in Kent where thousands of asylum seekers have come ashore in recent years, Mr Johnson insisted that those attempting to reach the UK by small boat were largely young men who were “not directly fleeing imminent peril”. And he denounced what he said was the “rank unfairness” that those using people-smuggling routes were often able to reach the UK more easily than those seeking asylum by legal routes.Despite the government’s recent official expressions of concern about human rights standards in Rwanda, he insisted that it was “one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognised for its record of welcoming and integrating migrants”.A new £120m Migration and Economic Development Partnership will allow anyone who has entered the UK illegally after 1 January this year to be relocated to Rwanda.And Mr Johnson said it would ensure that “those in genuine need will be properly protected, including with access to legal services on arrival in Rwanda, and given the opportunity to build a new life in that dynamic country supported by the funding we are providing”.Home secretary Priti Patel travelled to Rwanda to sign off the deal, which she said would involve the UK providing support with integration, accommodation and healthcare for up to five years for those resettling in the African country.Rwanda’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta suggested that arrivals from the UK will be given a chance “to make new lives in our country as full members of our communities” and will be provided with “a minimum for them to be able to live a dignified life”, including shelter and skills training. Those who do not want to stay in Rwanda will be “facilitated to return to their country of origin or settle in other receiving countries”, he said.Mr Johnson said he believed that offshoring migrants to third countries was a “solution to the problems of global migration flows that is likely to be adopted by other countries”, including some in Europe.He admitted he could not get rid of the problem of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, but said he hoped to “demolish the business model” of smuggling gangs who exploit people desperate to reach the UK.Speaking at Lydd airport in Kent, the prime minister said: “Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not. We can’t ask the British taxpayer to write a blank cheque to cover the costs of anyone who might want to come and live here.“Uncontrolled immigration creates unmanageable demands on our NHS and on our welfare state, it overstretches our local schools, our housing and public transport and creates unsustainable pressure to build on precious green spaces.“Nor is it fair on those who are seeking to come here legally if others can bypass the system. It’s a striking fact that around seven out of 10 of those arriving in small boats last year were men under 40 paying people smugglers to queue jump and taking up our capacity to help genuine women and child refugees.“This is particularly perverse as those attempting crossings are not directly fleeing imminent peril, as is the intended purpose of the asylum system. They pass through manifestly safe countries including many in Europe where they could and should claim asylum.“It’s this rank unfairness of a system that can be exploited by gangs which risks eroding public support for the whole concept of asylum.”He said that “taking back control” of illegal crossings would allow the UK to provide a “world-leading asylum offer” to those fleeing danger through “safe and legal routes”.“Whether you are fleeing Putin or Assad, our aim is that you should not need to turn to the people smugglers or any other kind of illegal option,” he said.“But to deliver that we must first ensure that the only route to asylum… in the UK is a safe and legal one and that those who try to jump the queue or abuse our system will find no automatic path to settlement in our country but rather be swiftly and humanely removed to a safe and third country or their country of origin.”He said he was giving the Royal Navy responsibility for tackling migrants crossing the English Channel, supported by £50 million of new funding for boats, aerial surveillance and military personnel.And he said that in future, those reaching the UK will not be housed in hotels, but in Greece-style accommodation centres which are to begin opening their doors shortly. More

More Conservative MPs have urged Boris Johnson to resign after he was fined for breaking lockdown rules at his illegal No 10 birthday party.Former Cabinet minister Karen Bradley is among Tories to voice concerns about the PM’s leadership, branding Mr Johnson’s behaviour during lockdown “unforgivable”.Other MPs to call on the prime minister to quit include Penrith and the Border MP Neil Hudson, who said he “categorically will not defend the indefensible” and that “the situation is untenable”. Solicitor general Alex Chalk said he was “not prepared to defend” the prime minister and others found to have breached Covid laws at Downing Street but did not call for Johnson to go.“There is a special duty on lawmakers and senior officials to act in a way which is beyond reproach, particularly during a pandemic when actions impact on public health,” the Cheltenham MP told the Gloucestershire Echo. “It is absolutely right that there has been a fulsome and abject apology.”But home secretary Priti Patel finally spoke out in support of the PM, after two days in which sources indicated that she could not comment in order to avoid accusations of seeking to influence a police inquiry.Speaking to reporters during a visit to Rwanda, Ms Patel said: “The prime minister has apologised, the prime minister has paid a fine.“I’m not going to give a running commentary on this, there’s an investigation still ongoing. But I think I just come back constantly to the fact that the prime minister has given, actually, a very thorough and fulsome apology, and he should be respected for that.”Mr Hudson, one of the wave of new Tory MPs elected across the north of England in 2019, urged the prime minister to lay out a timetable for an “orderly transition to a leadership election as soon as the international situation permits.Mr Bradley echoed similar views, telling the Stoke on Trent Live website: “Whilst law breaking in Downing Street is unforgivable, I am very aware that Europe is in a precarious position and that we all need to act responsibly so as to not make the situation worse.”I will spend the next few days consulting my constituents and will decide on what action to take after listening to them.”But I do wish to make it clear that if I had been a minister found to have broken the laws that I passed, I would be tendering my resignation now.”On Thursday another senior Tory, Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Commons defence committee, said there should be a no confidence vote in the prime minister’s leadership if the Conservatives did poorly in next month’s local elections.He told the BBC: “I think the prime minister has made his intentions clear – he wants to stay – but this is bigger than the prime minister.”Other MPs to have openly called for the PM to quit since the fixed penalty notice landed are Nigel Mills and Craig Whittaker. But dozens of MPs in Mr Johnson’s party have also leapt to the prime minister’s defence, posting messages of support on social media.Mr Johnson on Thursday promised to “set the record straight” in parliament next week after refusing to answer questions from reporters about his penalty.“You are going to have to wait until I come to parliament, when of course I will set the record straight in any way that I can,” he said. Asked if he could assure the chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was also fined, that he has “got that job for as long as he wants it”, Mr Johnson replied simply: “Yes.”If Mr Johnson does not resign of his own accord he would have to lose a no confidence vote in his party to be ousted – and this can only be triggered by Tory MPs. More

The British government has unveiled a £1.4bn plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda while their applications are processed by the Home Office, a move that has already been described as “cruel and nasty” by the Refugee Council, “unworkable, unethical and extortionate” by shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper and “evil” by Ian Blackford of the Scottish National Party.The policy arrives neatly in time for next month’s local elections, when Conservative MPs around the country will seek to court anti-immigration votes by appearing tough on refugees arriving at the English Channel, with more attempted crossings by dinghy likely as the late spring weather improves.Responding to the government, Enver Solomon of the Refugee Council said: “Far from enabling people to rebuild their lives, we know from where this has been done by other countries [that] it only results in high levels of self-harm and mental health issues, and can also lead to people ending up back in the hands of people smugglers.”Ms Cooper commented: “The Home Office is now a catalogue of failure, from passport queues to Ukrainian visa delays, to rising crime and falling prosecutions. Instead of getting a grip on the basics, all [home secretary] Priti Patel and Mr Johnson do is come up with wild and unworkable headlines. Britain deserves better.”Former Tory Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell also took exception to the policy, warning that it amounted to the creation of a “British Guantanamo Bay” and would cost the taxpayer £2m per migrant, arguing that it would be cheaper to book them suites at London’s luxury Ritz hotel.The “offshoring” arrangement with Rwanda, a country 4,300 miles away, will earn the African nation £120m under the initial deal, although its record on human rights has already been raised as a major cause for concern.Rwanda signed a similar agreement with Israel between 2014 and 2017 that was not a success, with almost of all of the 4,000 detainees sent there swiftly leaving the country to undertake the perilous journey to Europe, some of whom are understood to have fallen prey to human traffickers en route, notably in Libya.Denmark also agreed an equivalent deal with the country last year and was rebuked by the African Union for “burden shifting”.Simon Hart MP, secretary of state for Wales, defended the policy on Sky News, where he was asked by presenter Kay Burley about the fact that Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, had been accused of human rights abuses “on more than one occasion”.“That is true…”, he said. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that their reputation, as far as migrants are concerned – and their economic progress – is phenomenal, so I don’t think we want to sort of write this off now.”Mr Kagame has been president of Rwanda since April 2000 and has regularly been accused of engaging in the political oppression of his opponents.He rose to power in the aftermath of the Rwandan civil war of 1990-94 between the Hutu and Tutsi people, when he served as commander of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, which defeated the national army and Hutu militias before eventually establishing its own government.That conflict was deeply bloody and saw Hutu extremists commit genocide, engaging in atrocities in which anywhere between 500,000 and a million Tutsis were murdered over the course of 100 days, which in turn led to Jean Paul Akayesu, Hutu mayor of Tabathe, becoming the first person in history to be convicted of the crime under the UN Genocide Convention at International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on 2 September 1998.A further 29 people were convicted of the same offence in a landmark ruling.But one does not have to look back that far to find evidence of the UK government’s own concerns about Rwanda and Mr Kagame’s authoritarian rule.On 25 January 2021, Julian Braithewaite, director general for Europe at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland: “We remain concerned… by continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom. As a member of the commonwealth, and future chair-in-office, we urge Rwanda to model commonwealth values of democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights.”He recommended that Rwanda conduct credible investigations into “allegations of extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”, protect the freedom of the press and “screen, identify and provide support to trafficking victims, including those held in government transit centres”.The UK’s international ambassador for human rights, Rita French, appeared before the same body on 8 July 2021 and expressed regret that the country had so far ignored Mr Braithwaite’s first and third suggestions. More

Boris Johnson has promised to address parliament next week about his fine for breaching Covid laws and “set the record straight in any way that I can” on his previous claims that no rules were broken.Answering questions following a speech on immigration in Kent, Mr Johnson said that Rishi Sunak – who also faced a £50 fine for attending the prime minister’s lockdown-breaching birthday party in 2020 – was safe in his position as chancellor.He repeatedly dodged demands to say whether he accepted that he had misled parliament by telling the House of Commons last December that “I have been repeatedly assured … that there was no party and that no Covid rules were broken.”But he told reporters: “You are going to have to wait until I come to parliament, when of course I will set the record straight in any way that I can”.Mr Johnson’s promise came as a third Tory MP – Penrith’s Neil Hudson – broke ranks in the wake of the Partygate fines to say the PM should resign, following similar calls from Nigel Mills and Craig Whittaker.And former minister Karen Bradley said that she would have quit if found guilty of breaking laws she had passed, while Commons defence committee chair Tobias Ellwood said Johnson should submit himself to a vote of no confidence if Tories perform badly in next month’s local elections.Mr Johnson repeatedly brushed off questions about his Partygate fixed penalty notice, referring reporters back to the public apology which he issued on Tuesday.But asked if he could assure the chancellor that he has “got that job for as long as he wants it”, he replied simply: “Yes.” More

The government’s minister for refugees said just a week ago there was “no possibility” of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda, it has emerged.Lord Harrington’s comments came just seven days before Boris Johnson announces plans to send refugees seeking asylum to an offshore processing centre in the landlocked African country.Asked on 5 of April whether he could justify such ameasure, the Home Office minister said he was not aware of any such plan.”We haven’t sent any refugees to Rwanda… is that a rumour?” he said when asked about the possibility of the policy during an appearance on LBC Radio.When it was put to Lord Harrington that the policy might be applied to people crossing the Channel on small boats, he said: “If it’s happening in the Home Office on the same corridor that I’m in, they haven’t told me about it. “But we’re having difficulty enough getting them from Ukraine to our country – there’s no possibility of sending them to Rwanda.”Yet the prime minister is expected to announce the policy in a speech today, in an apparent bid to move on from his police fine for having a birthday party while the country was locked down.Commenting directly to Lord Harrington, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “This prime minister doesn’t care whose integrity he shreds in an attempt to save his own skin.”Boris Johnson is taking us all for fools – and that includes you.”The government is thought to have finalised a “migration and economic development partnership” with Rwanda which could see it house a processing centre for people trying to reach the UK.A similar system in Australia has led to dramatic human rights abuses, and British politicians have long considered copying it, but struggled to find a country willing to locate a centre.The plans have been met with scepticism. Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, who chairs parliament’s defence select committee, said the proposals were a “massive distraction”. “He’s trying to make an announcement today on migration, and all of this is a massive distraction,” Mr Ellwood told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.”It’s not going away. It is a crisis. It requires crisis management. There needs to be a plan.”Otherwise, we’re in drift mode, with potentially more resignations and more letters of concern. That isn’t where we want to go – it will then dominate the political agenda.”The select committee chair added: “My concern is, is that this will then drift because there are four more fixed penalty notices to come and the Sue Gray report as well.”There needs to be an opportunity in the very near future for us to draw a line on where we go and how the party then moves forward.” More

Boris Johnson is trying to distract the public from his lockdown law-breaking with an eye-catching announcement on immigration, a senior Conservative MP has said. Tobias Ellwood, who chairs parliament’s defence select committee, said plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing were a “massive distraction”.Mr Johnson on Thursday is expected to make a speech on Thursday laying out details of the policy, which will see refugees claiming asylum in Britain flown thousands of miles away to the landlocked African country.But the timing of the announcement has raised eyebrows, coming just days after the prime minister received his first fine for breaking lockdown rules at a birthday party for himself in Downing Street.”He’s trying to make an announcement today on migration, and all of this is a massive distraction,” Mr Ellwood told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.”It’s not going away. It is a crisis. It requires crisis management. There needs to be a plan.”Otherwise, we’re in drift mode, with potentially more resignations and more letters of concern. That isn’t where we want to go – it will then dominate the political agenda.”The select committee chair added: “My concern is, is that this will then drift because there are four more fixed penalty notices to come and the Sue Gray report as well.”There needs to be an opportunity in the very near future for us to draw a line on where we go and how the party then moves forward.”The prime minister has faced called to resign from some Tory MPs in light of the relations that Mr Johnson broke his own rules while others were locked down.Mr Johnson is expected to announce plans to put the navy in charge of Channel operations from Friday and and end to the practice of holding refugees in hotels. The government is thought to have finalised a “migration and economic development partnership” with Rwanda which could see it house a processing centre for people trying to reach the UK.A similar system in Australia has led to dramatic human rights abuses, and British politicians have long considered copying it, but struggled to find a country willing to locate a centre. More

There are many details yet to emerge on the UK government’s new migration deal with Rwanda, but the aim is clear: send asylum seekers away to deter them from arriving on our shores.A policy of “offshoring” asylum seekers is a first for the UK, but it has been done – though examples are limited – in other parts of the world.Australia started placing asylum seekers in detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island in 2001. The policy ran until 2007, and restarted in 2014. It has seen thousands placed in detention camps, at a cost of around $12bn in the eight years to 2021.Up to three-quarters of asylum seekers being held in Australia’s offshore camps were ultimately determined to be refugees, but the government denied them any prospect of resettlement in the country.The harsh physical conditions in the centres have been well documented, with detainees suffering from poor mental health due to prolonged detention and uncertainty about their future prospects, inadequate and unhygienic living conditions, and a poor standard of healthcare.At least 10 people have taken their lives while being held in Australia’s offshore processing centres.No evidence has been found for the effectiveness of the Australian model of offshore asylum processing in the reduction of migration flows, according to a report by the Open Society European Policy Institute.Announcing its new “migration and economic development” deal, the government described Rwanda as “one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa which is recognised globally for its record on welcoming and integrating migrants”.But a similar migration deal between Rwanda and Israel between 2014 and 2017 is said to have resulted in nearly all of the 4,000 people estimated to have been sent there leaving the country almost immediately.Many attempted to return to Europe via people-smuggling routes, where trafficking and human rights abuses are rife, notably along the journey through Libya.In a less direct example, the EU has also been accused of using a form of offshoring by outsourcing its efforts to curb migration to the Libyan coastguard, which the bloc has funded to carry out “pushbacks” in the Mediterranean and bring migrants back to Libya.Migrants have subsequently been detained in centres and have fallen victim to ruthless trafficking gangs, who have subjected them to torture in a bid to extort money from their relatives back in their home countries.Denmark signed a migration deal with Rwanda last year, as well as passing an act allowing the country to relocate asylum seekers to outside the EU while their cases are being processed, though no migrants are believed to have been sent from Denmark to Rwanda yet.The African Union strongly condemned the move, accusing Denmark of “burden shifting” and highlighting that Africa already “shoulders the burden” of many of the world’s refugees.With no offshore policy across the world known to have been a success, and many human rights abuses having resulted from such policies, the UK’s plan comes with considerable risks. More