The government is introducing emergency legislation to mark Rwanda as a safe country, the prime minister says, after the UK Supreme Court ruled the flagship asylum policy was unlawful.
Rishi Sunak said the UK was working on a new treaty with Rwanda following the court’s decision.
The treaty would protect against the removal of asylum seekers from Rwanda back to their home country, he said.
Legal heads are being scratched as to how the emergency legislation might work.
Declaring a country safe is not the same as proving to a court that it genuinely is – as the Supreme Court has shown.
The controversial plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda and ban them from returning to the UK – which has already cost at least £140m – has been subject to court challenges since it was first announced by Boris Johnson in April 2022.
No asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda. The first flight was scheduled to go in June 2022 but was cancelled after an intervention from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Credit: BBC