Perilous crossings: The Safety of Rwanda Bill and the rule of law 

As The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is passed, Access to Justice Project Lead, Isata Kanneh, looks at the implications.

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill was passed by Parliament late on Monday night (22nd April), with twelve MPs from constituents in Wales voting in favour. The Bill will now become law once it has received royal assent.  

The Bill was introduced in direct response to the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on 15th November 2023 that the UK government’s policy to deport people seeking asylum to Rwanda was unlawful. Five Supreme Court judges concluded that the Court of Appeal had been correct in its previous ruling that Rwanda was not a safe country and that the court was “entitled to conclude that there were substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers would be at real risk of ill-treatment” if removed to Rwanda.  

The Supreme Court ruling did not mean that there were no circumstances in which asylum seekers could be deported to a third country for processing. It also left open the possibility for circumstances in Rwanda to be improved so that the UK government could in future legally implement its policy. Instead of seeking to address the court’s concerns, the UK government chose to introduce legislation to declare Rwanda a safe country, in opposition to the ruling by the Supreme Court. 

Once the new Act becomes law, decision-makers will be legally required to consider Rwanda a safe country regardless of what the situation is in reality. The Act will bar courts and tribunals from considering evidence suggesting that Rwanda is unsafe. Under this provision, even if the most barbaric and strongly evidenced treatment of people deported to Rwanda is presented to the court, judges must ignore it. The legislation is designed to prevent legal challenge to the Rwanda policy on the grounds of safety or the risk to human rights after removal. Barring the court from considering evidence in this way is an extremely serious attack on judicial independence. It overturns a ruling of the Supreme Court and limits the freedom of the courts to reach evidence-based findings, prompting The Law Society to state that the Bill “corrodes the rule of law and access to justice”. 

We will have to wait to see how the legislation affects the asylum system in practice once it is implemented, but the Prime Minister has made it clear that the UK government’s intention is to press ahead very quickly with deportations to Rwanda. These will include possible deportations of Afghans who have served with British forces, after a Lords amendment to exempt them was quashed. 

From both a constitutional standpoint and a humanitarian one, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration Bill) is an objectionable and dangerous piece of legislation. Its passing has prompted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to issue a joint statement calling on the UK government to reconsider its plans. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated: 

“By shifting responsibility for refugees, reducing the UK’s courts’ ability to scrutinise removal decisions, restricting access to legal remedies in the UK and limiting the scope of domestic and international human rights protections for a specific group of people, this new legislation seriously hinders the rule of law in the UK and sets a perilous precedent globally.” 

The UK has already faced international criticism for previous legislation over concerns that it undermines international refugee law. International bodies are now publicly questioning whether the UK’s long-held principle of judicial independence has been eroded, with the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights describing the Bill’s provisions as an “effective infringement of judicial independence”.  

People from all perspectives of the debate on immigration and asylum should be gravely concerned by these precedents. Perhaps is time to talk less about “small boats” and more about how far we are prepared to let slide the major and fundamental principles on which our legal and justice systems are built.