BID's JCHR submission opposing the Rwanda Bill

Read our written evidence for the Joint Committee on Human Rights, contesting the Rwanda plan as the bill enters parliament again some of which is summarised below.

The government has re-introduced the Rwanda plan again, with the hopes of legislating against court rulings that have deemed the plan as unlawful. 

The government is attempting to respond to the ruling by legislating a change in facts to state that Rwanda is indeed a safe country. They are trying to legislate an alternative reality that Rwanda is safe and to prohibit the courts from assessing the safety of Rwanda despite the real risk of refoulment and a concerning human rights history.

They are attempting to pursue the Rwanda Plan even through The Supreme Court independently evaluated the evidence and found that there was a real risk of refoulment, and identified concerns on the general human rights situation in Rwanda.

Legislating against reality is an illogical, authoritarian and despotic approach to the law, particularly when fundamental, absolute (unqualified) human rights are concerned.

The requirement to conclusively treat Rwanda as a safe country does not comply with the UK’s human rights obligations as it stands in direct contradiction with the substantial evidence to the contrary, creating a real risk that those subject to removal will face ill-treatment amounting to a breach of article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

The government's attempts to place the decision-making authority in the hands of Ministers amounts to a significant erosion of the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, the separation of powers, in which even the supra-national court is not empowered to hold the executive to account.