Refugee Charities Call Sunak's Emergency Rwanda Treaty 'Cruel And Nasty'

While addressing Parliament, the newly appointed Home Secretary James Cleverly said that the government will continue to push for the Rwanda Treaty, despite the bill being ruled 'unlawful'.

According to the Home Secretary, the government are adamant that "Rwanda is and will remain conclusively a safe country for the purposes of asylum and resettlement".

Cleverly has since signed a new Rwanda Treaty ahead of its announcement, along with a Safety of Rwanda Bill that answers all of the concerns of the Supreme Court.

The emergency legislation is set to be fast-tracked and implemented as soon as possible; the government revealed.

The treaty is orthodox in its relocation of undocumented migrants who have arrived in the UK through the English Channel and prevents all UK courts and tribunals from delaying or stopping a person's removal to Rwanda.

"We can no longer tolerate the endless scourge of illegal migration in our country," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.

Despite researchers demonstrating how businesses and the economy benefit from migration, paying around three per cent more into the system than they took out, new Home Office data showed that housing migrants in hotels across the UK are costing taxpayers around £8 million each day.

"It is costing us billions of pounds and costing innocent lives, and that is why we are taking action to put a stop to it," Sunak added.

The Rwanda policy, which would see all undocumented migrants deported to the African continent, was rejected by both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court this year.

Lord Reed, the President of the Supreme Court, called the legislation a "real risk" to the lives of people who have already had their lives threatened elsewhere.

Ignoring the legal criticisms, Sunak also announced that the authorities have disabled sections of the Human Rights Act from the new emergency Rwanda Treaty, "to ensure our plan cannot be stopped".

Enver Solomon, the CEO of the Refugee Council, said: "We are appalled by the government's cruel and nasty decision to send those seeking sanctuary in our country to Rwanda."

"No one risks their own, or their family's life, unless they are running from dangers more acute than they face on these dangerous journeys," he added.

Deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda "will do absolutely nothing to address the reasons why people take perilous journeys to find safety in the UK", the CEO of the Refugee Council declared.

The government's new Rwanda Treaty will "only lead to more human suffering and chaos", costing the UK "a huge expense of an estimated £1.4 billion a year", he concluded.

In his speech to the MPs, Cleverly referenced Sunak's relentless "stop the boats" campaign and said that the push for the deportation bill sets out to simply "tackle the vile trade in people smuggling across the Channel".

Raza Hussain, the lawyer who represented the asylum seekers fighting the policy, criticised the government for putting migrants in danger of "absolute repression" in an "authoritarian, one-party state".

"Rwanda's asylum system is woefully deficient and marked by acute unfairness," Hussain added.

The Home Secretary continued to note that while their Lordships refused to allow the deportation of migrants to Rwanda, the High Court and the Court of Appeal agreed "that it is lawful to relocate illegal migrants, who have no right to be here, to another safe country for asylum processing and resettlement".

"The government cannot yet lawfully remove people to Rwanda," Cleverly said, going on to add: "This was due to the Court's concerns that relocated individuals might be 'refouled' – i.e. removed to a country where they could face persecution or ill-treatment."

On behalf of the Conservative authorities, he said: "We did not agree with that assessment."