This is a shambles and it is shameful and the Home Secretary has
no one but herself to blame.
This is not and never has been a serious policy and she knew that
when she chartered the plane. She knew that among the people she
was planning to send to Rwanda on this plane were torture and
trafficking victims. She knew she didn’t have a proper screening
process in place, she knew that some of them might be children.
Can she confirm it was the Home Office itself that withdrew a
whole series of these cases on Friday and yesterday because they
knew there was a problem with these cases? That even without the
European Court judgement, she was planning to send a plane with
just seven people on board because she’d had to withdraw most of
the cases at the last minute.
She knows that there is a lack of proper asylum capacity in
Rwanda to make fair decisions. That as the UNHCR says, they only
normally deal with a few hundred cases a year and there’s
normally only one eligibility officer who prepares the cases.
That’s as well as a lack of interpreters or legal advice to
ensure fair decisions.
Now she promised there will be extra payments to Rwanda for each
person that is transferred – presumably to pay for those extra
caseworkers and extra support – but she has still refused to tell
us how much. What is she hiding? Will she tell us how much she
promised Rwanda for each of the people she was planning to send
yesterday and how many Rwandan refugees she promised to take in
return?
She knows that serious concerns have been raised about Rwandan
restrictions on political freedom, on the treatment of people who
are LGBT, on the fact that 12 refugees were shot by the
authorities in 2018 for protesting against food cuts, on the fact
that there have been Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers returned by
Rwanda and she knows that none of those concerns have been
addressed.
She knows too that the policy will not work.
We need action to tackle dangerous criminal gangs who are putting
lives at risk, but she knows that her policies won’t achieve that
and that’s not her objective. Because if it was, she wouldn’t
have asked the National Crime Agency, whose job it is to target
the criminal gangs, to draw up 20% staff cuts – that’s
potentially 1,000 people being cut from the organisation that
works to tackle the gangs. Can she confirm she has asked the NCA
to draw up plans for staff cuts?
If she was serious she would be taking seriously the fact that
the Israel/Rwanda deal ended up increasing criminal people
trafficking and smuggling and her plan risks making things worse.
If it was, she would be working night and day to get a better
joint plan with France to crack down on the gangs and to stop the
boats being put into the water in the first place. But she isn’t
because her relationship with French Ministers has totally broken
down.
If she was serious about tackling illegal economic migration or
cutting the bills for people in hotels she would be speeding up
decision making so refugees can get support and those who aren’t
can be returned home. Instead her decisions have totally
collapsed from 28,000 a year to just 14,000 decisions a year –
fewer than Belgium and the Netherlands, never mind Germany or
France.
She is so badly failing to take those basic decisions, she is
trying to pay a country thousands of miles away to take decisions
for us instead. How shameful does that make us look around the
world if our Home Office cannot take those basic decisions.
She knew about problem after problem with her policy. She knows
this is unworkable, unethical and won’t stop the criminal gangs
and yet she still went ahead and spent half a million pounds
chartering a plane she never expected to fly.
She still went ahead and wrote a £120m cheque to Rwanda with a
promise of more to come.
She still went ahead because all she really cares about is
picking fights and finding someone else to blame
This isn’t a long term plan, it is a short term stunt. Everyone
can see it. It’s not a serious policy, it’s shameless posturing
and she knows it. It’s not building consensus, it’s just pursuing
division.
It is Government by gimmick. It’s not in the public interest,
it’s just their political interest.
And what are they prepared to trash along the way?
People’s lives. Our basic British values of fairness, decency and
common sense and the reputation of our nation.
Our country is better than this. We have a long tradition of hard
work and stepping up to tackle problems not to offload them, to
tackle the criminal gangs who put lives at risk and to do right
by refugees.
That is what she should be doing now and not this shambles that
is putting our country to shame.
