Supreme Court challenge likely after appeal judges rule Rwanda 'is not safe'

THE Tories’ flagship Rwanda policy to tackle the small boats crisis was dramatically stopped in its tracks today after senior judges ruled the African country was “not safe” for asylum seekers.

- Tristan Kirk and Nicholas Cecil

The Home Office drew up plans to provide asylum seekers and economic migrants with a one-way ticket to Rwanda, as a central plank of Rishi Sunak’s “stop the boats” pledge on immigration.

In December, High Court judges rejected legal challenges to the policy from individual asylum seekers and the charity Asylum Aid. But in a major setback for the Government today, the Court of Appeal ruled by a majority of two to one that the policy would put asylum seekers at risk. Delivering the ruling, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett of Maldon, sitting with Sir Geoffrey Vos and Lord Justice Underhill, said: “By a majority, the court allows the appeal on the issues of whether Rwanda is a safe third country.” The Lord Chief Justice said he disagreed with the decision, but he had been out-voted by the other two judges who had concluded “the deficiencies in the asylum system in Rwanda are such that there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that persons sent to Rwanda will be returned to their home countries where they faced persecution or other inhumane treatment, when, in fact, they have a good claim for asylum. In that sense Rwanda is not a ‘safe third country’.”