Robert Jenrick Resigns as Immigration Minister Over Rwanda Row

UK immigration minister Robert Jenrick resigned on Wednesday, according to interior minister James Cleverly. The resignation came just hours after Rishi Sunak’s government published draft emergency legislation meant to save the Rwanda scheme on immigration. 

The scheme, meant to deport asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda, was dealt a blow in November when the Supreme Court deemed it ‘unlawful’. The five judges unanimously rejected the scheme, ruling that Rwanda cannot be considered a safe third country as there were grounds to believe asylum seekers sent to the country under the scheme would be at real risk of refoulement – meaning they were at risk of forcible return to their country of origin even if they were liable to face persecution upon return.

After the ruling Sunak stated 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”. On Wednesday, the government published draft emergency legislation – the “Safety of Rwanda Bill” – to try and revive the scheme. Dubbed by the government “the toughest immigration legislation ever introduced”, it will “disapply sections of the Human Rights Act from the key parts of the Bill, specifically in the case of Rwanda”, to ensure that the government’s plan cannot be stopped.

However, the Prime Minister stopped short of opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – something the hard-liners in the Conservative Party, including former home secretary Suella Braverman, had insistently been calling for. Sunak’s decision to disapply the Human Rights Act but remain within the ECHR is widely seen as an attempt at finding a middle ground between hard-liners and other conservatives who oppose the notion to flaunt human rights conventions.

A Party Divided

This decision was cited as the reason for Jenrick’s resignation, as he said that the British government “has a responsibility to place our vital national interests above highly contested interpretations of international law”.

“I cannot continue in my position when I have such strong disagreements with the direction of the Government’s policy on immigration,” Jenrick wrote in his resignation letter.  He added that he has “consistently advocated” for legislation that places severe limits on “the opportunities for domestic and foreign courts to block or undermine the effectiveness of the policy”.

Addressing Sunak, he added, “A Bill of the kind you are proposing is a triumph of hope over experience. The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent.”

“This emergency legislation is the last opportunity to prove this, but in its current drafting it does not go far enough.”