Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks during a news conference following his first cabinet meeting, at Downing Street in London, Britain, 6 July 2024. [EPA-EFE/CHRIS J. RATCLIFFE / POOL]
Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday (6 July) he would scrap a controversial plan to fly thousands of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda in his first major policy announcement since winning a landslide election victory.
The previous Conservative government first announced the plan in 2022 to send migrants who arrived in Britain without permission to the East African nation, saying it would put an end to asylum seekers arriving on small boats.
UK inks new Rwanda asylum treaty, describes it as model for EU states
The UK moved on Tuesday (5 November) to salvage its ‘cash for asylum seekers’ agreement with Rwanda by signing a new treaty with the East African country. UK ministers have also expressed hope that the revised pact will be a model for collaboration on migration control with EU states.
But no one was sent to Rwanda under the plan because of years of legal challenges.
At his first press conference since becoming prime minister, Starmer said that the Rwanda policy would be scrapped because only about 1% of asylum seekers would have been removed and it would have failed to act as a deterrent.
“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent,” Starmer said. “I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent.”
Starmer won one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history on Friday, making him the most powerful British leader since former Prime Minister Tony Blair, but he faces a number of challenges, including improving struggling public services and reviving a weak economy.
The British government has already given the Rwandan government hundreds of millions of pounds to set up accommodation and hire extra officials to process the asylum seekers, money it cannot recover.
Starmer has said his government would create a Border Security Command that would bring together staff from the police, the domestic intelligence agency and prosecutors to work with international agencies to stop people smuggling.
Sonya Sceats, CEO of Freedom from Torture, one of the many organisations and charities which have campaigned to stop the Rwanda plan, welcomed Starmer’s announcement on Saturday.
“We applaud Keir Starmer for moving immediately to close the door on this shameful scheme that played politics with the lives of people fleeting torture and persecution,” she said.
