Rwanda Expanded
The government’s approach to the small boats problem is less about tackling the migration issue and more about appearing tough in front of the electorate in the run up to the next set of elections.
Plans were announced at the weekend for what is essentially a Rwanda Plus system whereby Channel migrants will not only be removed from the UK but they will also be banned from future re-entry and become unable to apply for British citizenship.
The Rwanda system is still held up in the courts at this time and it is hard to imagine these new proposals getting much further. The Refugee Council has already said that they would leave people in limbo and the measures would also likely fall foul of the UN Refugee Convention as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.
We will see more details when they are published tomorrow but any Illegal Migration Bill that seeks to reduce or deprive migrants of enshrined rights will face serious opposition and struggle in the courts.
The government claims that it will be able to circumvent those protections by applying a so-called ‘rights brake’ but many rights are absolute in nature and others can only be overridden when there are serious concerns about national security.
Even if such a brake makes it into an Act of Parliament the courts would have to examine it in the light of the Human Rights Act 1998. It is hard to see them allowing protections to be simply suspended in respect of certain persons or for a set period of time when doing so would be a breach of international obligations.
Outside of Suella Braverman’s Home Office, it is likely that senior Tories know this.
At this point, the government has been attempting to take a hard line on migration for years to almost no effect. Last year, 45,756 migrant crossed the Channel which is the highest number since records began in 2018. The government’s solution is to keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result. The only thing that will change if the new Bill does get passed is that more people will be locked up in detention ahead of processing at further cost to the taxpayer.
The battle being fought by Rishi Sunak is a cultural one as he attempts to persuade the public and those within his own party that he is tough on small boat crossings. His new policy makes a nice splash in The Mail on Sunday and piles pressure on the Labour Party but it is unlikely, at this point, to become law before the next general election.
The prime minister will be measuring the success of his plan in the polls rather than in Parliament.
This week in the podcast we examine a tax case that discusses the definition of a ‘newspaper’. The Supreme Court had to balance two divergent approaches to statutory interpretation to decide whether digital editions should be zero-rated for VAT like their print edition counterparts.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2023-uksc-7/
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