Priti Patel’s Rwanda plan for asylum seekers wastes millions and lacks public support. So why is she doing it?

The Home Office’s most senior civil servant had nothing good to say about home secretary Priti Patel’s stalled efforts at deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. In alarming evidence yesterday to the home affairs select committee, permanent secretary Mark Rycroft acknowledged that Patel’s plans will likely make a bad situation worse.

The government’s policy aims to send refugees seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda to be processed in Rwanda under Rwandan laws for potential settlement there. Whether anyone receives asylum or is removed elsewhere will be a matter for Rwanda to decide.

Patel has repeatedly said in parliament that the policy will provide an effective deterrent to those making dangerous small boat journeys across the English Channel. However, Patel’s top mandarin confirmed in a published letter that any “evidence of a deterrent is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified”.

In his evidence before MPs yesterday, Rycroft said his assessment has not changed, noting that “the whole policy hinges on the amount of deterrence it does” – without any evidence to support it.

Despite several calls on the government to provide any modelling for why their plans should work, ministers have confirmed that the Rwanda policy is not based on factual evidence. Home Office minister Tom Pursglove MP has confessed his department does “assume” most making the dangerous journey across the English Channel are actually economic migrants, despite virtually all who apply receiving asylum from his department.

It is noteworthy that Pursglove does not argue that the rules should change. This suggests that, if most making the crossing would still receive asylum in the UK if allowed to apply, the government is purposely seeking to remove individuals they expect are genuine asylum seekers – which seems to me a shameful abrogation of our international obligations.

Moreover, as parliament’s joint committee on human rights heard two weeks ago, the government’s deal with Rwanda does not explicitly omit Ukrainians seeking asylum in the UK from being removed to Rwanda. While I doubt the government seeks to deter Ukrainians from seeking safety in Britain, it is shocking this deal could be rushed for an agreement before thinking it through.

This suggests the plans are really about playing politics with false assumptions and a lack of evidence rather than creating a world-leading system that protects the most vulnerable and shows global leadership.

The most worrying part of Rycroft’s testimony was when he admitted the policy might make the situation worse. He told MPs that it would be a “pyrrhic victory” if small boat crossings were reduced by creating “even more dangerous” alternative routes in response – making the problem worse, not better. Without safe and legal routes, individuals may seek more extreme means of crossing the border.

The government’s Rwanda policy has not removed a single individual and might never do, but it has already cost UK taxpayers £120m in an initial upfront payment to Rwanda, in support of it agreeing the deal. The government has refused to comment on how much they expect their policy to cost, if fully implemented, but it will clearly run into the many tens of millions.

While government supporters claim refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country reached, this view is based on a mistake, in my opinion. Under the UK’s treaty obligations, it is up to the individual to determine where to make any application for asylum.

Government supporters are likely mistaking the terms and conditions of the UK’s membership in the EU – and its Dublin Regulation policy on asylum – for how the law should work after Brexit. Under the Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers could be returned to the first safe country within the EU state they had entered.

During the Brexit negotiations, I advised several frontbench shadow ministers in the House of Commons and the House of Lords to table written questions calling on the government to disclose what – if any – plans they had for remaining in the Dublin Regulation, or agreeing an alternative since 2017.

No such plans were agreed during the talks, with no provision made in the Brexit deal for asylum returns – although the government had said it hoped to reach an arrangement. However, its negotiations in this area failed. Despite repeated requests on my advice, the government never conducted any acknowledged impact assessment of the consequences for leaving the agreement without an alternative plan in place and were caught unaware when we left without any plans in place.

Despite repeated warnings over five years, it was no surprise for me to see small boat crossings skyrocket since Brexit – and continue to grow to record highs. Anyone reaching our shores knows that there is no return arrangement in place with EU countries, since the prime minister rushed to agree a deal that he now accepts was flawed.

With no means of return to other EU countries, the UK has become an increasing target. Instead of taking back control of our borders, the government has lost a key policy of border security. They were warned and refused to listen.

So if the Rwanda deal is so unlikely to succeed at enormous waste to taxpayers with not one individual removed, why does the home secretary press on with it?

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In my view, the reason isn’t because the public supports it. The government has been “witholding” public opinion from parliament and refusing to publish in full its consultation on asylum plans, as The Independent reported. In fact, the Conservatives have fallen behind Labour in public trust on immigration and the gap has been widening.

I think the answer is fairly simple. In my opinion it’s a distraction intended to get us talking about anything but the future of a rule-breaking prime minister after Partygate; a man who has lost the confidence of 148 of his own MPs. As shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said last week, “this is a short-term stunt” and “government by gimmick” – happy to trash our British values of fairness and decency in order to score political points at extortionate taxpayer cost.

Instead of diverting attention from the incompetence of the prime minister and his hapless cabinet, unworkable, evidence-free stunts like the Rwanda policy only shine a brighter light on the government’s failings. The public deserve better than this, and so too refugees seeking sanctuary.

We are all worse off – only a change in government can begin to put things right.

Thom Brooks is professor of law and government at Durham University