Rwanda Bill: What happens next if Rishi Sunak forces a controversial plan through a Lords vote?

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The prime minister has said that “nothing will stand in our way” of getting flights off the ground after the government’s deportation plan in Rwanda was passed by parliament.

The House of Lords was locked in a protracted battle over Rwanda’s Security (Asylum and Immigration) Bill on Monday, sending it back to the House of Commons five times in a bid to secure changes.

The unelected chamber ended the deadlock after MPs rejected a demand that Rwanda could not be treated as safe until the foreign minister, after consultation with an independent monitoring body, made a statement to parliament to that effect .

So what happens now that the Lords’ flagship Rwanda plan has been adopted?

There will reportedly be around 150 asylum seekers on the first two or three flights to Kigali, with flights expected to begin in July.

“We have been preparing for this moment… We have increased detention places to 2,200,” Mr Sunak announced.

The Prime Minister said the government had put an airport on standby and booked commercial charter planes for specific slots to take the asylum seekers to Rwanda. He added that 500 highly skilled individuals had been found escorting “migrants all the way to Rwanda”, while another 300 would be trained in the coming weeks.

The Prime Minister said the first flight would depart in 10 to 12 weeks and promised regular flights throughout the summer “until the boats are stopped”.

Will this plan face legal challenges?

Refugee charities are ready to support individual asylum seekers chosen to take part in the first flight and challenge their deportation in court.

The bill limits asylum seekers’ ability to challenge the policy as a whole, or to challenge the idea that Rwanda is safe, but there may be room for a legal challenge based on their own personal circumstances – such as a history of human trafficking, or LGBTQ+.

After being notified of their deportation to Rwanda, an asylum seeker would have seven days to appeal the deportation. Some of these appeals go to the highest immigration tribunal, which must then decide each case within 22 days.

The government has appointed a pool of judges to hear these appeals so that flights can get off the ground in the summer.

These individual challenges could in theory go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), where judges could then rule that that person’s deportation would be unlawful.

Countries that have signed the ECHR are not bound by these rulings, even if they very rarely ignore them. Mr Sunak has already indicated he will ignore any ECtHR ruling that tries to stop flights to Rwanda.

The civil servants’ union, the FDA, is also considering a legal challenge to the bill. Secretary-General Dave Penman said the bill has put civil servants “in an awkward position, where a minister could order them to break international law, but their professional duty, as set out in the Civil Service Act, prevents them from doing so.”

Mr Sunak said civil servants should take instructions from ministers to ignore ECtHR rulings. He said he has amended guidelines for civil servants to make it clear that they must follow directions from ministers, even if they conflict with international law.

Who else could be sent to Rwanda?

As of March 2023, there are more than 55,500 asylum seekers in Britain after arriving illegally. Their case has been paused by the Interior Ministry while the government waits to see if its policy of sending people to Rwanda will succeed.

The “perma-backlog” has been caused by the government’s Illegal Migration Act, which bans ministers from granting asylum to anyone who entered the UK illegally on or after March 7, 2023. The law also requires the government to remove illegal migrants who have entered the country. after July 20, 2023, when the law received royal assent.

The Thinktank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, estimates that more than 55,000 people are in this limbo.

More than 24,000 of them have received letters warning that they are eligible for removal from Britain.

How much does this all cost?

The spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, recently said that if 300 people were eventually sent to Rwanda, the cost would be £1.9 million per person.

The UK government had paid £240 million to Rwanda by the end of 2023, but the NAO says the total cost will be at least £370 million over five years.

Britain will spend as much as £150,874 on processing and operational costs for every asylum seeker sent to Rwanda.

Where will the asylum seekers stay when they arrive in Rwanda?

Asylum seekers arriving in Kigali will be housed in the Hope hostel, which can accommodate 200 people.

The government had promised that the asylum seekers would be moved to more permanent housing after three months in this hostel. However, this month it emerged that a number of houses intended for migrants had been sold to locals.

Around 70 percent of the 163 homes believed to have been intended for British asylum seekers have now reportedly been sold.