The newly elected British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, immediately upon assuming office, scrapped the previous government’s plan to deport asylum seekers who arrived in the UK without permission to Rwanda.
According to sources from the Labour Party cited, the plan is now considered ‘essentially dead.’
Starmer had pledged to abolish the Conservative Party’s scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
However, as immigration was one of the key issues in these elections, it is estimated that he will also be under pressure to find a way to stop the thousands of people arriving from France, crossing the English Channel in small boats.
The Rwanda programme was first announced by Boris Johnson and continued by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. It was delayed due to lengthy legal battles, with no flights having taken off, but it became a battleground in the election campaign.
A Labour Party insider confirmed to the Telegraph that it is now ‘dead,’ saying, ‘If Rishi Sunak believed Rwanda would work, he wouldn’t have called an election. It was a fraud. By calling an election, Sunak acknowledged this fact.’
Britain can terminate the Rwanda agreement by invoking a break clause. Under this clause, Britain should not make any further payments from the date of its activation.
It is noted that when the bill was being discussed, in a joint statement, Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said that “the new legislation marks a further step away from the UK’s long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention”.
(with information from in.gr)
