Braverman Hits Back on Rwanda and Calls for ‘End to Self-Deception’ by Sunak

The former home Secretary Suella Braverman pictured on a tour of homes being built to house UK illegal immigrants on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda, on March 18, 2023. (PA)

The former home secretary Suella Braverman—who was sacked on Monday—has said the government needs to end its “self-deception” about being able to make its flagship Rwanda policy for illegal immigrants palatable to the UK Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

In an article in the Telegraph, Ms. Braverman said the government’s current position would mean no deportation flights would depart for Rwanda before the general election and she set out a five-point plan for getting them underway.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled the Rwanda policy was unlawful as there remained a “real risk” illegal immigrants who had entered the UK and were then transferred to the east African nation might be sent back to the countries they came from where they originated and where they might face “ill-treatment.”

Ms. Braverman’s successor as Home Secretary, James Cleverly, immediately announced plans to soldier on with the Rwanda policy and said they would upgrade the deal into a treaty with the government in Kigali.

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, then went a step further and announced there were plans to introduce legislation, “which would enable Parliament to confirm that, with our new treaty, Rwanda is safe.”

Lawyers representing people facing deportation to the African nation have argued Rwanda was an “authoritarian, one-party state” with a “woefully deficient” asylum system and was not therefore a “safe” destination to send those who entered Britain illegally.

Warning About Endless Legal Challenges

In her article, Ms. Braverman said the plan cooked up by Mr. Sunak and Mr. Cleverly was likely to get mired in further legal challenges.

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She said what was needed was to pass legislation which, “excludes all avenues of legal challenge.”

“The entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the [U.N.] refugee convention, must be disapplied by way of clear ‘notwithstanding’ clauses,” said Ms. Braverman.

The former home secretary—who is expected to challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party if Mr. Sunak loses the election next year—also suggested Parliament sit over Christmas to ensure the new law is passed.

Her call on the Rwanda policy has echoes of Boris Johnson’s 2019 election manifesto pledge to “get Brexit done.”

Ms. Braverman wrote: “The more fundamental question is where does ultimate authority in the United Kingdom sit? Is it with the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament? Or is it with the vague, shifting, and unaccountable concept of ‘international law’?”

She added: “Now is not the time to waste energy on a post-mortem of how we got here. What matters for those of us who believe in effective immigration control is how to move forward. This requires honesty.”

‘There Must be no More Magical Thinking’

“Above all, it demands of the government an end to self-deception and spin. There must be no more magical thinking. Tinkering with a failed plan will not stop the boats,” Ms. Braverman added.

The proposed UK-Rwanda treaty would tackle the issue of refoulement—a legal term meaning the danger of those who fled to the UK and whose applications for asylum are then rejected by the Rwandan government being sent back to the country from which they first fled—which concerned the Supreme Court judges.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right) and the then Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, meet with teams coordinating the evacuation of British nationals from Sudan, during a visit to the Foreign Office Crisis Centre in central London, on April 25, 2023. (Hannah McKay/PA Media)

The treaty is expected to put in place legal safeguards which the Rwandan government would have to observe.

But Ms. Braverman wrote in the Telegraph, “amending our agreement with Rwanda and converting it into a treaty, even with explicit obligations on non-refoulement, will not solve the fundamental issue.”

Instead, she suggested, “embedding UK observers and independent reviewers of asylum decisions” into the Rwanda process.

But the former Cabinet minister, Damian Green, has described her five-point plan as “profoundly unconservative.”

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr. Green referred to it as an effort to, “pass a law to block all those other laws” and said: “I would specifically dislike and oppose that proposal.”

Mr. Green, who remains a Conservative MP, said: “It’s not just all our own laws passed by Parliament, and all international treaties that we have signed, that Suella wants to sweep away. She specifically says let’s sweep away all judicial review protection, and all common law protections, and that’s why I said on Twitter that this is the most unconservative proposal I have ever heard.”

“Conservatives believe in a democratic country run by the rule of law. And dictators, Xi and Putin, would prefer to have the state completely untrammelled by any law. And so, as a democrat, I oppose it,” added Mr. Green, who served in Cabinet under Theresa May.

PA Media contributed to this report.