First deportation flight to Rwanda 'booked' as landmark bill becomes law

25 April 2024, 10:23 | Updated: 25 April 2024, 15:02

The first deportation flight to Rwanda has been booked, Number 10 has said, on the same day that Rishi Sunak's controversial bill became law.

The Safety of Rwanda Bill, which declares the African nation a safe country to deport asylum seekers to, received royal assent today, meaning it has become an act of parliament and has become law.

The prime minister created the bill to revive the scheme to send people arriving on small boats to the east African nation after the Supreme Court ruled the scheme "unlawful" in a landmark ruling last year.

The bill - which is now formally known as the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 - states that Rwanda should be regarded as a safe country "for the purposes of relocating people, including in UK courts and tribunals" .

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After a number of setbacks and delays, the bill was passed in parliament earlier this week, with Home Secretary James Cleverly hailing the approval as a "landmark moment in our plan to stop the boats".

Anticipating the bill's passage, the prime minister earlier this week promised the first flights would take off in 10 to 12 weeks - "come what may".

And today Downing Street said the first flight to Rwanda had been booked and the first group of people to deport had been identified.

"We are now contracting on resources like case workers, judiciary spaces," a spokesperson said.

"The prime minister said on Monday that we want to see several flights taking off a month from summer and beyond, and we've identified the initial cohort of people, from which we'll look to get flights off the ground as quickly as possible," they added.

The Lord Speaker today told the House of Lords that the bill had received royal assent - the process by which the King agrees to make the bill into an Act of Parliament and therefore law.

For weeks, peers had been pushing back on the scheme and trying to get ministers to make changes to the controversial legislation, but later backed down from its opposition and let the bill pass, as is convention.

Holding a news conference before the bill was passed, Mr Sunak said there were now 2,200 detention spaces and that 200 dedicated caseworkers had been trained to process claims quickly.

Around 25 courtrooms have been made available and 150 judges will provide 5,000 sitting days, he added.

The prime minister also said there were 500 "highly trained individuals ready to escort illegal migrants all the way to Rwanda, with 300 more trained in the coming week".

Although royal assent paves the way for deportation flights to get off the ground, it does not mean there will not be further obstacles in the form of legal challenges.

Campaigners have already said they are identifying migrants who may be singled out for deportation and will be lodging legal challenges, while a clash with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) - which blocked the first flight from taking off in June 2022 - could also be on the cards.

Much of the opposition to the bill has centred on the ability it gives ministers to disapply elements of both domestic and international human rights law and the fact individual legal challenges are only permitted if a detainee faces a "real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious irreversible harm if removed to Rwanda".

Read more:
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Torture experts at the UN have also warned airlines against "facilitating unlawful removals to Rwanda" under the agreement struck with Kigali.

"Even if the UK-Rwanda agreement and the 'Safety of Rwanda' Bill are approved, airlines and aviation regulators could be complicit in violating internationally protected human rights and court orders by facilitating removals to Rwanda," the experts said.

They said that removing asylum-seekers to Rwanda or any other country where they would be at risk of refoulement - the term used to describe the return of an asylum seeker to a country where they face persecution - "would violate the right to be free from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".

Speaking after the bill got royal assent, the Liberal Democrats said it was "destined to fail", attacking the government for spending almost £300m on the scheme despite no-one being sent to Rwanda yet.

The party's home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael, said: "These figures will put salt in the wound for millions of people across the country who are struggling with a cost of living crisis and facing sky-high GP waiting times.

"Rishi Sunak needs to get a grip and stop wasting taxpayer money on his farcical obsession with this disastrous policy."

(c) Sky News 2024: First deportation flight to Rwanda 'booked' as landmark bill becomes law