At Monday’s passionate press conference held in Downing Street, Sunak said – referring to the months-long parliamentary debate on the draft law establishing the plan – that “whatever is too much is too much, now my patience is really running out, as is the British people’s”.
He stated: the two chambers of the parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, will now sit until the draft law is passed.
Without naming the location, the conservative prime minister said: the government has already put an airport on standby, chartered commercial charter flights and trained five hundred people to escort those to be resettled all the way to Rwanda. Another three hundred attendants are currently being trained.
According to Sun, the first flights can take off in 10-12 weeks. The prime minister blamed the largest opposition force, the Labor Party, for the delay of the resettlement program, saying: if the Labor upper house representatives were not busy with hindering the plan, the process could have started weeks ago.
The government of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson concluded an agreement with Rwanda in April 2022 that the British authorities could resettle asylum seekers arriving in boats organized by human traffickers from the European continent to the Central African country.
At the time, Johnson argued that Rwanda was a safe resettlement country. However, the British Supreme Court declared the plan illegal last November. According to the decision of the highest British legal forum, the agreement did not eliminate the risk that asylum seekers resettled from Britain would be deported by the Rwandan government to the countries from which they fled or to other countries where they could face abuse or persecution.
In order to circumvent this order, the government of the current British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is trying to state in a draft law that Rwanda is a safe destination country for resettlement. The legislation would effectively remove the jurisdiction of the courts to determine whether an African country is considered safe for resettlers.
The bill has been debated in the London parliament for months, after the upper house – where the Conservative Party does not have a majority – keeps adding amendments to the motion that the government does not support. Since January, the draft law has traveled back and forth between the two chambers three times. According to the regulations of British parliamentarism, a motion can only become law if the House of Commons and the House of Lords reach a consensus on the draft text.
However, Rishi Sunak said at a press conference on Monday that “no matter what happens”, the flights to Rwanda will take off.
He put it this way: the planes will leave for Rwanda in a regular rhythm, several times a month, “continually until the boats are stopped.” He said the British government was dealing with brutal, global human-smuggling gangs, and these organizations had no interest in risking lives by sending unseaworthy boats to Britain.
Rishi Sunak said: so far this year, nine people have lost their lives while trying to cross, including a seven-year-old girl.
According to the Prime Minister, the British authorities have detained almost a thousand people on suspicion of human trafficking, frozen five thousand bank accounts, and in the criminal proceedings that have ended with convictions, the courts have imposed a total of five hundred years in prison.
