Rwanda small boats policy ruled unlawful by UK Supreme Court in huge blow to Rishi Sunak

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The Supreme Court has ruled that the UK Government's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful.The legislation would have removed asylum seekers to the east African country if they came to the UK illegally.The move was part of Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's plan to "stop the boats" of refugees coming across the English Channel.Five justices at the UK’s highest court unanimously rejected the Government’s appeal over the policy on Wednesday morning.Flights forcibly removing migrants to Rwanda are now less likely to take place any time soon.

The Rwanda policy has been a central part of Sunak's leadership and has been stalled by more than a year of legal challenges.No deportation flights have taken place since the plans announced in April 2022, and £140 million has already being handed to the Rwandan Government.In a summary of the judgment read out by President of the Supreme Court Lord Reed on Wednesday, he said there would be a risk of genuine asylum seekers being returned by Rwanda to the home country they fled from.Reed said the “legal test” in the case was whether there were “substantial grounds” for believing that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at “real risk” of being sent back to the countries they came from where they could face “ill treatment”.He said: “In the light of the evidence which I have summarised, the Court of Appeal concluded that there were such grounds.“We are unanimously of the view that they were entitled to reach that conclusion.

Indeed, having been taken through the evidence ourselves, we agree with their conclusion.”Sunak will now come under pressure from sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the Tory right to haul Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights.But