Category: immigration

Rwanda report


Cross party committee on human rights criticizes the government’s Rwanda policy

February 2024

The Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill ends its House of Lord’s stage today (12 February) and returns to the Commons. The Bill has been roundly condemned by many human rights and other organisations and the committee said that it is ‘fundamentally incompatible with Britain’s human rights obligations’.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that Rwanda is not a safe country and the government’s attempt to pass a law simply saying it is is bit like passing a law saying water can run uphill. The Committee went on to say ‘the Bill disapplies laws that might prevent and individual’s removal to Rwanda including many of the key provisions of the Human Rights Act.

‘It might also impact on Northern Ireland, that it would both undermine the Windsor Framework and the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement’.

It also raises the point about UK’s reputation. We have they say, a reputation for respect for human rights of which ‘we should be proud’. 

Immigration, and most recently the Channel crossings, have generated a considerable degree of angst and hostile media coverage. This is not recent and goes back many years and started to emerge as a political force during the Blair years. In many respects it goes back further to various waves of immigrants such as the Huguenots from France, Flemings from the low countries and Jews fleeing Russia. All have been met with hostility of some degree. 

Recent immigrants are cast as not really refugees at all but economic migrants, are cheating the system, are living off benefits and so forth. Newspapers – and not just tabloids but the Daily Telegraph and the Independent – have carried hundreds of negative stories and helped keep the temperature high. The Sun even ran a story that swans were being stolen from the London parks and eaten by immigrants (invented). The raised media attention has increased public concern to which the politicians are obliged to reflect. 

Watch the Amnesty video

Anomaly

A curious anomaly is that people who’s offspring emigrate to live and work overseas (as ‘economic migrants’ no less) are spoken of in terms of pride. Emigrants good: immigrants bad. 

Another curiosity is that many of the politicians leading the hostility and proposing ever harsher measures including deportation to Rwanda, are themselves sons or daughters of immigrants. Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, Danny Kruger and going back further, Michael Howard (Romania). 

The benefits of immigration to this country almost don’t get a look in. In November last year, the government’s own statistics show that around one in 5 of people working in the health service were not born in the UK. Indeed, the service would struggle to survive (even more than now) if these people were not working here. 

The entire debate is based on hysteria. Boat people have assumed a disproportionate sense of anger and fear even though they represent a small proportion of all immigrants to this country. The majority do go on to claim asylum. The hysteria and media mis- and disinformation has resulted in the plan to deport a few hundred to Rwanda, a policy which is performative rather than likely to be effective. 

Sources: Daily Mail, FullFact; Liberty; Hansard, Guardian (accessed 12 February 2024)

The Salisbury Amnesty group celebrates 50 years of existence this year

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Refugee report, December


Refugees and Rwanda continue to fill the headlines

December 2023

As the House of Commons debates the Government’s latest attempt to make their Rwanda project fly, this month’s emphasis has been very much on the small boats. On the progress of the Bill over the next few weeks, anything might happen. The government managed to get the second reading of their bill passed on 12th to clear the way for the plan to remove some people to Rwanda. 

As a topline figure, the number of arrivals by small boat this year has reached 29,000; this is about a third down on last year. It has been argued, however, that it’s the number of boats that is down, not people – they are using bigger boats. We have no confirmation of this.

The Government has changed the rules for asylum seekers/refugees following their processing; they now have 28 days to leave the temporary hostels they have been confined in and to find their own accommodation.  As a result the level of homelessness among this community has increased dramatically.  The Evening Standard claims that the numbers of homeless in the migrant community has increased 39% in a month (presumably this is a London figure).

The big increase in the number of claimant withdrawals has been exercising the legal profession.  These are migrants who have claimed refugee or asylum seeker status, but have not turned up for interview.  As a result, 17,000 claimants who have apparently withdrawn their claim are now unaccounted for, though presumably they are still in the UK (the Home Office has no knowledge of their whereabouts).  On a similar topic, of the 154 unaccompanied child asylum seekers who went missing earlier this year, 132 are still missing.

While the number of legacy cases is being reduced, new claims are still keeping the total high.  The Government’s aim of clearing the pre-June 2022 backlog has not yet been achieved (it’s believed to be still about 10,000, and these are among the most complicated cases).  Meanwhile, new applications have amounted to 90,000, leaving the total figure at around 109,000 (less than the peak).  It should be noted that Home Office staff turnover is very high and it may well be that the 17,000 alluded to above include names taken off the backlog to reduce the figures.  Also the Home Affairs Committee this week elicited the information that approval levels went down to 38% in Q2 and back up to 67% in Q3 – the reason is unclear.

Small boats population accounts for around 6.6% of the total

It is worth pointing out, as part of the argument, that the small boats population amounts to about 6.6% of the net immigration numbers for the year (the 700,000 excess of arrivals v departures) figure) and half that for the gross total (incomers only)

Another problem area has been the gap between a claimant being granted leave and receiving a Biometric Residence Permit – the Home Office claim not to know how long the average wait in limbo is.

The apparent suicide of an asylum seeker on the Bibby Stockholm has drawn attention to the cost of the barge, currently estimated at £22 million.  The number of boat people on board is not known, but is believed to be around 200 currently.

On the issue of potential refugees from Gaza, the request in October from various refugee organisations in the UK to the Government to come up with a scheme for taking numbers on, as was done with Ukraine, does not appear to have been acted upon as yet.

Finally, a survey by Labour List this week invited respondents to say how many arrivals had actually been removed to Rwanda.  The percentage saying, correctly, none was 48%.

Andrew Hemming

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Refugee report: November


Reports focus on destitution and the need for cooperation concerning asylum

November 2023

We are grateful to group member Andrew for his work in compiling this report on the current state of affairs with refugees and asylum seekers. A quiet month on the legislative front, but much noise from certain quarters. It was noted that the Home Secretary’s complaint against “tent-dwellers” included the aside “many of them from abroad”, with its implication of illegal immigrants joining in the supposed lifestyle choice. This was roundly condemned by a number of refugee charities, along with homelessness support groups. 

The Joseph Rowntree Trust have published a report on destitution in the UK. Among its findings was the fact that 28% of destitute households were migrants, and rates for that group were 35% higher than the national figure. Such households also tend to have more children. 

The Institute for Public Policy Research (a centrist think tank) has also published a report, “Charting New Waters”, on dealing with those crossing in small boats. Like the Safe Passage report mentioned last month it is concerned with developing safe routes, an organized Europe-wide system to share the responsibility, and a reform of the asylum processing system. The report does not give much detail, but reinforces the feeling that the government needs to engage with our neighbours in finding solutions to the issue. 

On that topic, the numbers of asylum seekers crossing the channel has been lower this month, mainly because of the weather 

We still await the High Court decision on the Rwanda plan, but the feeling is that the government is prepared to lose the case. This would, of course, put the European Court of Human Rights in the firing line, at least with the Home Secretary. The decision is expected in the first half of December. 

Many Afghans who were promised a safe passage to the UK after the Taliban takeover are still waiting; 3000 who have been promised asylum in the UK are in UK-funded hotels in Islamabad, but the Pakistan government is ejecting all Afghan refugees. There has been no government statement, as far as we know. 

The Home Office has rolled out a new “asylum decision-making prioritisation”. This is really a pushing ahead in trying to reduce the backlog of cases awaiting decision. The government has argued that the backlog has been reduced, but in fact the total has increased due to new cases, while the “legacy” cases from pre-2022 are indeed being reduced. 

Migration lawyers have noted with pleasure that the number of refusals of claims of trafficking by new arrivals has fallen, following a change in the regulations. 

The Home Office announced this week that the number of asylum seekers to be held on the barge Bibby Stockholm is to be reduced from 500 to 425, following a fire risk assessment. This would likely make the provision 10% more expensive than housing claimants in hotels. 

On the campaigning front, next year’s Refugee Week will be from 17th to 23rd June. The theme will be “Our Home.” 

AH

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Refugee summary


The October update on the current state of refugees into the UK
October 2023

The week’s big event has been the start of the Supreme Court’s review of the legality of the Rwanda deportation plan. They are expected to take 3 days to come to a conclusion, but this will not be made known for some weeks. Also, the Mayor of Portland’s planning permission protest against the Bibby Stockholm ship was heard this week (she lost) and the Home Office have reported that claimants will be sent back to the barge from 19th October. In passing, the Home Office is refusing to state the cost of the barge, as it would not be “in the public interest”.

The government’s Illegal Migration Act is facing a court challenge from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) on the ground that it breaches the Windsor Framework. The framework is the revised post-Brexit deal for Northern Ireland, which was agreed by the UK and EU earlier this year. It deals mostly with trade issues but also includes a human rights element. It commits the UK not to water down the human rights provisions that flow from the Good Friday Agreement.

Opening up the UN Refugee Convention to reform would cause the world to “go backwards” on refugee rights, a UN leader has said. Gillian Triggs, UN Assistant Secretary-General, told the One Young World Summit in Belfast that there is a “global environment of populist rhetoric” that is damaging to refugees. The 1951 UN Refugee Convention outlines a number of protections for refugees, including basic minimum standards, and asserts they should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.

Suella Braverman

In a trip to Washington DC last month, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said it should be questioned whether the application of the UN’s Refugee Convention is “fit for our modern age”.

Channel crossings

The mild Autumn has kept the small boats coming, the total people arriving for the year so far being just over 25,000. This is down by about 20% on last year, mostly because of the absence of arrivals from Albania. There have been two major reports this month: Safe Passage has been looking at safe routes for prospective refugees and the Refugee Council have looked at the data on arrivals, and discuss the impact of the new Illegal Migration Act. The Refugee Council’s analysis of new Home Office statistics shows that three in every four of the people who have crossed the channel so far this year would be recognised as refugees if the UK Government processed their asylum applications. This is higher than the Refugee’s Council previous analysis of those who made the journey in 2022, which found it was almost two-thirds. The statistics also show that:

More than half (54 per cent) of those who have made the perilous crossing come from just five countries – Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea, Syria and Sudan.

With the exception of Albanians, the number of people crossing the channel is higher in 2023 compared to 2022.

Analysis based on the data shows that once the Illegal Migration Act 2023 comes into force:

 • Each year, over 27,000 refugees who cross the channel will be denied status in the UK.

 • As few as 3.5 per cent of those people arriving by small boat, 1,297 people, will be removed from the UK to their own country.

 • 35,409 people who arrive in the UK by small boat could be left in limbo each year, having had their asylum claim deemed permanently inadmissible but not having been removed.

• Even with a safe third country agreement in place with Rwanda which allows for up to 10,000 people to be removed there annually at least 25,409 people will be left in a state of permanent limbo each year.

(The Illegal Migration Act The Illegal Migration Act became law on 20 July. The main elements of the Act include the creation of a duty for the Home Secretary to arrange for the removal of anyone who arrives irregularly into the UK – including, but not limited to, those who arrive by small boat. Anyone who is covered by the duty to remove will also have any asylum application or relevant human rights claim deemed automatically inadmissible. )

The Safe Passage report concentrates on devising a better system of dealing with new arrivals. It recommends developing safe routes, not least to end the control of the smugglers, an organized Europe-wide system to share the responsibility, and a recommitment to the UN-based regulations under international law.

The Migration Advisory Committee has recommended that the shortage occupation list is abolished and that people in the asylum system with permission to work are allowed to work in any role. These are some of the recommendations in the full review of the shortage occupation list, published this week.

With thanks to group member Andrew for the work in producing this report.

AH

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Refugees and Rwanda


Government still in difficulty with refugees and its Rwanda policy

October 2023

Immigration remains a key issue for both the government and the opposition and the focus is on the large number of Channel crossings from France. The prime minister has pledged to end the crossings, however they continue to come in large numbers. The government spent considerable time trying to find countries willing to take migrants and eventually found Rwanda to which £145m was paid to set up the necessary reception facilities. The planned first flight ended when the European Court found against the deportations because under article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, there is an absolute ban on the use of torture and other serious mistreatment of which there is considerable evidence that it takes place in that country.

In a Country Report by the US Department of State in 2022, there is an extremely long list of problems with human rights in Rwanda. They include: unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment by the government; harsh and life threatening prison conditions and arbitrary detentions. Their activities also extend overseas and in particular in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which include killings, kidnapping and violence. The report also lists a range of activities against the media and journalists. There are similar reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. Altogether it paints a picture of a country which is a stranger to human rights and where violence and repression are a way of life.

Daniel Trilling in his ‘long read’ in today’s Guardian newspaper (5 October) Inside the Rwanda deportation plan: there were so many warnings it would fail. How did it get this far? traces the whole story of where the idea came from and how it got stuck after the European Court ended it at least temporarily. The proposal was meant to act as a deterrent to further Channel crossings. This was never likely to have been the case since people willing to risk their lives in a rubber dingy having paid considerable sums to a smuggler are sufficiently desperate not to heed any such threat even if they were aware of it.

He reveals that the Foreign Office said ‘no’ to Rwanda largely because of the sort of reasons listed above. They were aware of the UN putting pressure on Rwanda to stop its troops engaging in mass killings and rape in DRC. Officials from the Foreign Office were preparing Country Policy and Information Notes CPIN, which were unfinished at the time the decision was taken.

The government was embarrassed when an undercover report secretly filmed Johnson Busingye, the high commissioner for Rwanda saying disobliging things about the UK government such as it was “immoral for the British to claim to be a compassionate country”. Asked about the shooting of twelve refugees he replied “so what”.

The Supreme Court is due to rule at the end of the year and it is likely that the prime minister Rishi Sunack will ignore the European Court if it rules in the government’s favour.

It is hard to fathom the reasoning behind the government’s position on this policy. It was designed to be a deterrent but it was advised by its own officials that this was unlikely to be effective. The numbers of immigrants who would be sent is a matter of a few thousand which, in the face of the many thousands crossing the Channel and the tens of thousands languishing in immigration centres and hotels, will be a tiny proportion. They must have been aware of the copious evidence that the country was entirely unsuitable as a place to send vulnerable people. They must also have known that Israel abandoned the very same policy and the Danish government had put its policy on hold.

At the Conservative conference this week, the prime minister cancelled the next leg of the HS2 rail project claiming that ‘the facts had changed’ and this prompted a change in policy. Yet in the case of Rwanda, the facts haven’t exactly changed but have been visible all the while. It is though the policy – described as ‘shameful’ by Amnesty International’ chief executive – has become totemic existing in a space beyond reason and facts, a kind of belief system which defies rational thinking. Partly it is because the prime minister has made stopping the boats a key policy aim and Rwanda is central to that, a policy which cannot be cancelled for fear of looking weak. If flights take place at the end of the year it will cause considerable suffering to those sent there.

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Salisbury group member appears in national paper


Salisbury group member Lesley appears in a montage on the front page of the Long Read in the Guardian, 5 October

October 2023

An article in the Long Read section of the Guardian newspaper entitled Inside the Rwanda deportation plan has a photo montage in which group member Lesley features holding two banners.

The article is by Daniel Trilling and is a detailed review of the muddle, confusion and dissembling behind the government’s desire to send unwanted migrants to Rwanda.

We received word that the first deportation flight in June was to take off from Boscombe Down, a secure airfield near Amesbury in Wiltshire. It had been moved from Stanstead at the last moment to ward off potential protests and because it is surrounded by barbed wire fencing. Two Salisbury group members were able to make it to the airfield where there was a large contingent of police officers and a bevy of cameras. The photo was taken by one of the photographers. As you know, while we waited for the take-off, a final appeal to Europe meant the flight was cancelled hence the fury about the European Court and threats to take us out of the jurisdiction of the Court to enable future deportations to take place.

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Detention centre report published


Enquiry into the the shocking treatment of immigrants at Brook House published

September 2023

In September 2017, BBC Panorama broadcast a programme, Undercover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets, into the shocking treatment of detainees at the Brook House detention centre near Gatwick in Sussex. It followed months of undercover filming to expose a wide range of wrongdoing at the centre. Those who watched the programme were treated to examples of what the report refers to as ‘the use of racist, abusive and derogatory language by some of the staff towards those in their care, the effects of illicit drugs and the use of force by staff on on physically and mentally unwell people’. An enquiry was commissioned in November 2019 and it was published today (19 September 2023) in three volumes.

It showed one custody officer place his hands around the neck of a detained person and say “you fucking piece of shit, because I’m going to put you to fucking sleep” (para 14). Using force to restrain detained people who were physically or mentally ill was common (43).

Conditions at the centre were extremely poor. It was run at the time by G4S and then by Serco both given contracts the report explains, based largely on price with little regard to quality aspects. Misgivings about the tenders were not put into practice (19). The Senior Management Teams were poor and largely invisible to junior staff.

Although conditions were poor to begin with, and the proximity to Gatwick added noise to the problems, the Home Office carried on adding numbers of inmates thus sometimes increasing to three the number of occupants in the cells. The cells had no privacy concerning toileting (25).

The report opens by saying that it was a matter of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The combination of hostile attitudes to immigrants and refugees, the use of contractors who were unequal to the job, Home Office failures and seemingly no sign of inspections or visits from outsiders to see what was going on, combined to create a toxic mix of arrogance, cruelty and gratuitously bad treatment of people many of whom had suffered trauma and in some cases torture. Indeed, it is reported today that Suella Braverman, the current Home Secretary, stopped inspections taking place at all. Detainees were isolated from the outside world. Language barriers made things worse. Basic freedoms were curtailed the report said. This took place here in Britain.

Priti Patel was the Home Secretary during this time and in her many speeches and interviews she has made no secret of her hostile attitude to refugees and immigrants. She talked up the crisis and played a part in creating an atmosphere of disdain for those arriving, increasingly at the time, in small boats. One of her proposals for example was to install wave machines to prevent boat people from landing on our shores. That Britain took a far smaller proportion of refugees than many other nations was seldom mentioned.

It is sometimes easy in situations such as this to focus on the front line individuals behaving badly and one thinks of other undercover programmes in care homes and institutions where people with disabilities are living and where bullying and other failures have been exposed. They are the visible end result but their behaviour is in turn a result of failings further up the food chain by people less visible. It is the politicians who set the tone and agree the funding or more usually, the cuts to funding. It is the system which prefers outside contractors employed largely on who will do the cheapest job, who have weak management systems and whose main interest is turning in a profit. It is the media which perpetuates myths of ‘invasions’ and that immigrants are not really refugees but ‘economic migrants’ or even coming here to enjoy our bounteous benefit system. The combined effects of this hostility and disinformation was that someone poorly trained on the front line of an overcrowded detention centre feels it is acceptable to treat vulnerable people in the way they did.

Immigration, and in particular those crossing the Channel in small boats, is a political hot potato at present. The temperature is only going to rise as the election date gets nearer with attempts to ‘weaponise’ the issue for political advantage. We should all be aware however, that it is people we are dealing with in centres such as this and the majority are genuine migrants from war or persecution. A majority win their appeals.

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Exiting the European Court possible


Some Conservative politicians again calling for the UK to exit the European Court

August 2023

The issue of the small boat crossings continues to generate considerable passions amongst many in the Conservative party in particular and in sections of the media. This week, the first of the asylum seekers arrived on the barge, Bibby Stockholm, moored at Portland with many local protests, concerns about fire safety and legal protests in train. The response to the protests and appeals from the deputy chair of the Conservative party, Lee Anderson, broke new ground when he said that if they weren’t happy with the accommodation they should ‘f–k off back to France.’ When interviewed on GB News he declined to withdraw the remark and he has received support from others in the party.

Part of the frustration that some feel is possibly based on the misunderstanding about the Court and its relationship with Europe. Brexit was largely based on a desire to regain our sovereignty and the fact that the Court has nothing to do with the EU has come as a surprise and disappointment to those who believed it did. When the Court stepped in to stop the first flight to Rwanda a year ago from Boscombe Down airfield (a mile or so away from where this is being written) it generated considerable fury and with it the threat to leave the aegis of the Court.

If we did leave the Court, we would join Belarus and Russia, hardly exemplars of sound government or decent human rights. It would, as one of the key proponents of the Court in the ’50s, be a great blow to our international standing. There are many in the Conservative party who recognise this.

In many respects, the problem of Channel crossings is as a result of successful policies elsewhere to prevent other forms of crossing. Channel ports are now surrounded with razor wire and boarding and aeroplane is now a major exercise in logistics and checking of details. Legal routes barely exist and the ability of someone to claim asylum in their own country is all but impossible. Getting on a boat is almost the only way.

The ECHR is a threat to British democracy

Daily Telegraph, 10 August

In previous posts we have commented on many aspects of the government’s policy and how exporting people to Rwanda – tried and abandoned by Israel – will be of limited utility. Hundreds will be deported, if it comes into being, while the backlog is in the tens of thousands. Ascension Island is also being rumoured: another expensive and impractical solution.

On 18 July, the government passed the Illegal Migration Bill which means those who arrive by crossing the Channel will not be able to claim asylum. This is likely to be a breach of the Refugee Convention, hence the call to exit the ECHR.

Such is the desire of those to escape war or persecution that threats to send them to Rwanda or place them on a barge off the south coast are unlikely to be a deterrent. The continued failure to stem the flow of crossings represents a major political problem for the government. Oafish comments by the party’s deputy chair are in a way a symptom of the frustration felt in the face of this huge, and in many respects insoluble problem.

It is a pity that the connections between causes and results is not discussed more. The coup in Niger is the latest example of a desire to grab mineral resources. Western countries along with China and Russia, are desperate to secure supplies of these resources and the rights of people who get in the way are nearly always ignored. We are happy for the City of London for example to fund companies and to enable the vast wealth to be routed through the city. We pay little attention to the ‘front end’ so to speak and the activities of corporations in their thirst for rare earths, oil, gold, uranium or other commodities. The resulting conflicts and displacement of peoples, some of whom end up on the northern coast of France, suddenly results in angst and furious editorials in our tabloids. A man reaps what he sows as the Bible tells us. Perhaps if government spent more time concerning itself with the activities of our mining and resource companies then fewer would be forced from their homes and land, dispossessed or otherwise maltreated and fewer would end up at Calais and thence onto a boat. Fewer then would need to f–k of back to France.

UPDATE: 12 August 2023. Migrants taken off the barge because of the risk of Legionnaires disease (11th). Ascension Island no longer an option it is reported.

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Refugee report: July


Refugee report with an update on the current state of play with legislation

July 2023

The Illegal Migration Bill continues its dizzying route to completion, despite 20 defeats in the House of Lords. The Commons has rejected all the amendments, and the Bill will return one more time to the Lords and, presumably, back to the Commons next week before the recess in a process called ‘ping pong’. Despite the enormous interest in this subject and its high political salience, it was reported that fewer than 40 MPs turned up for the debate and only 20 or so stayed to the end.

We are grateful for group member Andrew for this report.

The latest situation update:

All of the Lords’ amendments were overturned by the Commons, but several had some support from the Conservative benches (Tim Lough-ton complained that they had not had enough time to mull over the government’s changes). The Home Office offered several concessions on Monday evening, The bill’s provisions will no longer apply retrospectively to anyone deemed to have arrived illegally from March 7 (10,000 people will escape the legislation’s measures, according to the Daily Mail) … the detention of unaccompanied children will be limited to eight days (significantly longer than the 24 hours backed by peers) … and the detention of pregnant women will be limited to 72 hours (extendable to seven days by ministers). Other issues still in play from the Lords debates include:

• Removing unaccompanied children from within the scope of the Bill
• Allowing anyone not removed within 6 months to re-enter our asylum system and have their claims heard
• Ensuring Local Authorities maintain care of unaccompanied children and that children are protected during the age assessment process
• Ensuring LGBT+ people are not removed to countries where they risk persecution, and that victims of trafficking are not included within scope of the Bill (as sought by Theresa May). These will presumably come up again in the next Lords session.

Elsewhere

The highest number of small boat arrivals on a single day this year occurred last week at 686. The total for the year to last weekend was 12,119, slightly down on last year.

UNHCR report says the worldwide figure for refugees is now 29.4 million excluding Palestine. 76% in low/middle income countries 70% in a neighbouring country. 339,300 refugees returned home and only 114,300 refugees were resettled out of camps last year. UNHCR estimates that 1.5 million people globally are in need of resettlement because they are in a protracted refugee situation, meaning they had been refugees for longer than five years. For each refugee that was returned or resettled in 2022, there were 16 new refugees.

Free Movement have picked up on a story that the Home Office is planning to reintroduce the concept of “reasonable force” to remove families with children. Watch this space.

Small boats

The government does not know how much its new small boats bill will cost or if it will achieve its core aim of deterring Channel crossings, an official assessment has found. Documents published over three months after the Illegal Migration Bill was presented to parliament estimated that it will cost £169,000 to deport each asylum seeker – but it is unclear how many will be removed and what “third countries” will receive them. The only existing deal is with Rwanda and the Home Office refused to publish the actual payments agreed, citing “commercial sensitivities” as a Court of Appeal ruling on the scheme looms.
A report from the Migrant and Refugee Children’s Unit argues that Albania is not a “safe country”, as the Government maintains.

Controversial plans to house asylum seekers on a barge to reduce reliance on expensive hotels will save less than £10 a person a day, according to a report. The report, Bibby Stockholm – At What Cost? from the NGOs Reclaim The Seas and One Life To Live, provides the first detailed estimated costings of the Bibby Stockholm, the barge the Home Of-fice is planning to use in Dorset to accommodate asylum seekers.

On statistics, in correspondence between the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Robert Chote and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, Chote commented: “concerns have been raised with us about your statement in the House of Commons on 20 March that :“Today, a majority of the cases being considered for modern slavery are people who are coming into the country – for example, on small boats. We are seeing flagrant abuse, which is making it impossible for us to deal appropriately with the genuine victims, to the point that 71% of foreign national offenders in the detained estate, whom we are trying to remove from the country, are claiming to be modern slaves.”

Minister accused of using the wrong statistics

“The Home Office advised us that the quoted figure comes from a recent report about modern slavery referrals for people detained for return after arriving in the UK in small boats and that your statement was intended to refer to the proportion of foreign national offenders (FNOs) that are referred to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) as potential victims of modern slavery. The report explains that while an increasing proportion of all those in detention after arriving by small boat are referred to the NRM up from 52% in 2020 to 73% in 2021 (and subsequently falling to 65% between January and September 2022), the proportion among foreign national offenders is much lower (at around 20% between January and September 2022)”. This argument came up again in the Commons when Theresa May claimed Jenrick was using the wrong statistics.

Beyond Europe, it seems that the UN estimates that more than 31 mil-lion Africans live outside the country of their birth, mostly within the continent (only a quarter head for Europe). AlJazeera is running a se-ries of articles on this subject.

The BBC’s More or Less programme presented a special episode on immigration, featuring Colin Yeo as well as several other experts, which is recommended.


Migrant Help runs a guidance and advice helpline to assist asylum seekers in the UK as they move through the process. The charity is not part of the Home Office but is the advice by The Independent, a Migrant Help adviser said: “I am afraid Migrant Help are not contracted to respond to MPs correspondence and have forwarded the attached to the MP correspondence team. Our call handlers will reach out to the service user to see if there is any further support they can provide.
I would like to clarify that not responding to MP enquiries is not a Migrant Help policy but a directive given to us by the Home Office as part of our work under the advice, issue reporting and eligibility (AIRE) contract. I have expressed con-cerns regarding this process

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Rwanda: the morality question


How moral is the plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda?

July 2023

The wish by the government to deport asylum seekers and refugees to Rwanda has consumed considerable political capital and is a topic rarely out of the news. It is the flip side of the problem of people arriving by small boats across the Channel which causes so much fury in sections of the media. The extreme difficulty in applying for asylum from outside the UK is only occasionally mentioned. Legal routes have all but been closed off forcing those seeking asylum to engage in perilous journeys. According to ex prime minister Boris Johnson however, writing for the Daily Mail in his new job, said there are ‘numerous safe and legal routes for people to come to Britain’. His argument is that once word gets round the ‘camp fires’ of northern France that there is a chance of being sent to Rwanda, the business model of the smugglers will be broken (We must take radical action to get Rwanda done!) 30 June*.

This raises a moral question which is that the idea of deportation and treating them badly is to use people as a matter of policy. It is using deportation as a kind of punishment for a class of people no matter what the legitimacy of their claim might be. It is also logically unsound since it will be the refugees who will suffer and end up in Rwanda, not the people smugglers. The likelihood of the policy deterring the smugglers has been challenged recently in an impact assessment report which notes that the Home Office had little evidence to show that it might work. Academics say that it is issue of culture, kinship and language which are important factors and changing the rules has little effect.

Stopping the boats – assuming that to be possible – does not stop the problem. War, persecution, climate and poverty are among the factors which force people to leave their homes and embark on long, perilous journeys to seek asylum.

It has been pointed out that Rwanda is not the best of countries as far as human rights are concerned. There is little freedom of expression. Journalists are harassed and intimidated and opposition leaders find it hard to make headway. Bloggers and lawyers are intimidated and sometimes unlawfully detained. What has not been commented on however is that the deportation policy crucially depends on Rwanda being a safe place for us to send refugees and it will be extremely difficult for the UK government to stop the deportations if evidence of mistreatment by police or security forces in Rwanda subsequently emerges. It will also be difficult and embarrassing for the government to criticise President Kagame for any infringements of evidence of bad treatment. Having invested so much political capital in the policy, to admit the country is not in fact safe will be extremely awkward.

Refugees will find it hard to settle in the country as did those who went their as part of the – now abandoned – Israeli scheme. Perhaps the enthusiasm for the schemes owes something to several Australians who act in advisory roles in Downing Street. The Australians sent their asylum seekers to islands in the Pacific in a much criticised scheme.

Public attitudes toward refugees seems slowly to be changing and a recent IPSOS poll showed the UK to have one of the most positive attitudes towards immigrants at 56%. The numbers wanting our borders closed totally has declined. 54% wanted immigrants to stay. This despite the relentless rhetoric in the tabloid press.

Government attitudes seem to have hardened by contrast and ‘stopping the boats’ is one of the prime minister’s five pledges. In the i newspaper on Saturday (2 July) there was speculation that the government is considering leaving the European Court of Human Rights to enable it to overcome the courts’ objections to the deportations.

In all the commentary, the political jousting in the Commons and the seemingly relentless articles in the media, the moral argument seems seldom to emerge. The boat people are treated as though they are almost criminal and there is even an attempt to besmirch the RNLI for rescuing them in the Channel: RNLI a Migrant taxi service claims the Daily Mail (1 July*). Deportation is to be used as an instrument of deterrence.

Some indeed might be economic migrants and not ‘real’ asylum seekers. But a large proportion are desperate people fleeing desperate circumstances and need our help. We have a moral and legal obligation to hear their appeals. It is a great shame that the voices of intolerance have such salience in our media and in some members of the government.

*Articles accessed 3 July

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