Braverman Compared to Putin Over Proposed Rwanda Plan

Just days after her dramatic sacking as home secretary, Suella Braverman has put forward her proposal to revive the Rwanda deportation scheme – prompting senior Tory MP Damian Green to compare her to Putin and Xi Jinping.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the government’s scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – who made ‘stopping the boats’ one of his key pledges upon taking office – has vowed to do “whatever it takes” to revive the scheme.

The Supreme Court’s main reason for ruling against the scheme was that Rwanda cannot be considered a safe third country, and that migrants sent there under the scheme may be at risk of refoulement – being sent back in countries where they could be in danger of persecution. Sunak said he was prepared to revisit the UK’s domestic legal framework, and that he’d be taking the “extraordinary step” of “introducing emergency legislation to confirm Rwanda is safe”. So far, there have been few details as to how this would be put into practice.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman was one of the biggest supporters of the Rwanda deal, and she wrote a scathing letter following her sacking in which she called Sunak’s leadership both “weak” and “failing”. Now, writing on the Telegraph, she has put forward a five-point plan to revive the Rwanda deal.

In its second point, the proposal called on the government to block “all avenues” of legal challenge available to asylum seekers. This is meant to allow flights for Rwanda to start taking off before the next general election, which the Conservative party is currently poised to lose by a wide margin.

‘Attempt to Rule Outside the Law’

“The entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the Refugee Convention, must be disapplied by way of clear ‘notwithstanding’ clauses,” Braverman wrote. “Judicial Review, all common law challenges, and all injunctive relief, including the suspensive challenges available under the Illegal Migration Act must be expressly excluded.

“Individuals would, however, be given the chance to demonstrate that they had entered the country legally, were under 18, or were medically unfit to fly – but Home Office decisions on these claims could not be challenged in court.”

Braverman also called for detention be made mandatory for anyone found to have entered Britain ‘illegally’, with no possible legal recourse.  Commenting Braverman’s statements, Conservative MP Damian Green said, “The second test is the most unconservative statement I have ever heard from a Conservative politician. Giving the state the explicit power to override every legal constraint is what Putin and Xi do. We absolutely cannot go there.”

Jonathan Jones KC, former head of the government’s legal department, said that Braverman’s proposed plan would be “an attempt to rule outside the law”, for the sake of “putting (at most) a few hundred people on a plane to a place recently found to be unsafe by our highest court”.

He added, “I don’t remotely see how sensible people in government could go along with it. I don’t believe it will happen.”

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