2023-12-12 22:19:39
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s bill allowing the expulsion of migrants to Rwanda was adopted in a vote in Parliament on Tuesday, December 12. This is the text considered as ” the hardest “ never presented against illegal immigration, in the words of the head of the conservative government.
During a first vote in the House of Commons, 313 deputies voted in favor of the text, 269 voted against, giving the head of government a respite for the time being, while he risked seeing his authority seriously undermined.
This version of the text voted on in Parliament aimed to respond to the objections of the British Supreme Court, which blocked a previous version of the project last month. The highest legal body in the United Kingdom declared the text illegal, considering that the risk was “real”^, for the people concerned, to be returned to their country of origin by the Rwandan authorities, even if their request for protection was justified.
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A law never applied
Signed in April 2022 between the government of Boris Johnson and that of Paul Kagame, the “Rwanda partnership” had never been implemented then. In fact, in June 2022, a first flight which was to take a certain number of migrants to Kigali was canceled at the last minute after an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.
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This new text defines Rwanda as a safe third country and prevents the return of migrants to their country of origin. It also proposes not to apply certain provisions of British human rights law to evictions, to limit legal recourse.
“The new treaty that I signed with Rwanda and the bill that accompanies it are a game-changer”declared at the opening of the debates the British Interior Minister, James Cleverly, assuring that the text is “compliant with the terms of the refugee convention”.
Dissatisfaction of the right wing of the conservatives
However, this text was considered insufficient for the right wing of the conservative party. Some believe that London should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and other international human rights conventions, to prevent all legal challenges from succeeding.
On Monday, the radical Brexiters of the European Reaserch Group (ERG) judged that the project only brought “partial and incomplete solution” to prevent appeals to the courts, and required “very important amendments”.
During the debate on Tuesday, opposition MP Chris Bryant (Labour) ruled that “the idea that someone who is not deterred by a dangerous crossing on a dinghy in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world would be deterred by this flimsy nonsense is simply laughable”. Et “we cannot make Rwanda safe just by saying it”he added.
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Last week, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick resigned, refusing to support a text that does not work ” far enough “ according to him. The pressure was such that the Secretary of State for Climate, Graham Stuart, returned to London from COP28 in Dubai to take part in the vote.
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