Court rules Rwanda deportation law should not apply in Northern Ireland – UK politics live
Court rules Rwanda deportation law should not apply in Northern Ireland because it breaches Good Friday agreement
A judge has ruled that provisions of the UK’s Illegal Migration Act should be disapplied in Northern Ireland, as they undermine human rights protections guaranteed in the region under post-Brexit arrangements, PA Media reports. PA says:
Mr Justice Humphreys also said aspects of the Act were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The post-Brexit Windsor framework jointly agreed by the UK and EU includes a stipulation that there can be no diminution of the rights provisions contained within Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement of 1998.
The Illegal Migration Act provides new powers for the government to detain and remove asylum seekers it deems to have arrived illegally in the UK. Central to the new laws is the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Mr Justice Humphreys delivered judgment at Belfast high court today in two challenges against the Act that focused on the peace process human rights protections guaranteed by the Windsor framework.
The judge found that several elements of the Act do cause a “significant” diminution of the rights enjoyed by asylum seekers residing in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.
“I have found that there is a relevant diminution of right in each of the areas relied upon by the applicants,” he said.
He added: “The applicants’ primary submission therefore succeeds. Each of the statutory provisions under consideration infringes the protection afforded to RSE (Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity) in the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.”
The judge ruled that the sections of the Act that were the subject of the legal challenges should be “disapplied” in Northern Ireland.
He also declared aspects of the Act incompatible with the ECHR.
One of the cases was taken by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the other by a 16-year-old asylum seeker from Iran who is living in Northern Ireland having arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied child.
The boy, who travelled from France by small boat and claimed asylum in July 2023, has said he would be killed or sent to prison if he returned to Iran.
The judge agreed to place a temporary stay on the disapplication ruling until another hearing at the end of May, when the applicants will have an opportunity to respond to the judgment.
Dr Tony McGleenan KC, representing the government, indicated that an appeal may be considered.
“We’ll be taking our instructions on the judgment and the position in terms of any further litigation will become clear, my Lord,” he said.
Outside court, solicitor Sinead Marmion, who represented the teenage Iranian asylum seeker applicant, said the judgment was “hugely significant”.
Marmion said the judgment would prevent the Rwanda scheme applying in Northern Ireland.
“This is a huge thorn in the government’s side and it has completely put a spanner in the works,” she told the PA news agency.
“There’s a huge obstacle in the way of them being able to actually implement that in Northern Ireland now, as it’s been found to be incompatible with the Windsor framework.”
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But the speech was not really about the future. It was about Labour, and the most effective passage – the one where Sunak seemed most confident of his argument, and most emotionally engaged – came when he accused Keir Starmer of being unprincipled in embracing Natalie Elphicke. (See 11.44am.) You can expect to hear this point ad nauseam between now and the election.
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Sunak linked this to a broader argument about security, and claimed there is now a dividing line between the Conservatives and Labour on defence spending. This was a weaker line because, although Labour has not yet committed to matching the Tory promise to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, Sunak is only committing to doing this by 2030, which is not just after the forthcoming election, but beyond the one after that.
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Here are the main points from the speech and Q&A.
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Sunak said that Keir Starmer’s decision to let Natalie Elphicke, the very rightwing Tory, join Labour showed that he was “completely and utterly unprincipled”. In his speech he said:
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Labour have almost nothing to say about [the future]. No plans for our border. No plans for our energy security, no plans for our economy either.
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And no principles either. Keir Starmer has gone from embracing Jeremy Corbyn to Natalie Elphicke all in the cynical pursuit of power at any price.
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And during the Q&A he went further. Asked about Elphicke’s defection, he said:
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I think it shows less about her and it’s more about Keir Starmer. And it shows him to be completely and utterly unprincipled.
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This is someone who went from embracing Jeremy Corbyn to embracing Natalie Elphicke. It just tells you that you can’t trust what the guy says. Right?
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And if you’re trying to be everything to everyone, fundamentally you don’t stand for anything. I think that will be increasingly clear to people.
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Sunak said that Britain would be less safe under a Labour government. Asked by the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, if he was saying that Britain would be less safe under Starmer, and if his argument to the electorate was “better the devil you know”, Sunak replied:
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In a word, yes.
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And, in response to another question, Sunak said that he was committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. He went on:
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Keir Starmer can’t stand here and make that pledge and, actually, the Labour party and Keir Starmer not matching our investment on defence spending emboldens our adversaries.
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What do you think Putin thinks when he sees that? That he thinks the West isn’t prepared to make the tough choices to invest in their security?
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Because Russia’s economy has mobilised for war, he is continuing to be aggressive, we need to meet that aggression with strength.
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Sunak said that he was committed to giving Ukraine military aid to resist Russian aggression “for as long as is necessary”. He played down suggestions that the government is getting ready for a point where it might have to back a peace deal – although he did not deny a report saying David Cameron floated this scenario in his meeting with Donald Trump. (See 12.58pm.)
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And Sunak claimed that Labour would not be able to continue to support Ukraine militarily as effectively as the Conservatives. He explained:
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It’s because of that increase in defence spending [the pledge to raise it to 2.5% of GDP by 2030] that I can stand here and provide more support to Ukraine … And we can say that that support to Ukraine will be provided for as long as necessary to repel Russian aggression.
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Keir Starmer can’t stand here and make that pledge and, actually, the Labour party and Keir Starmer not matching our investment on defence spending emboldens our adversaries.
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Sunak said that, while he accepted the Conservatives had made mistakes, they could not be blamed for everything that had gone wrong in the past 14 years. In his speech he said:
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Now I’m not saying that the past doesn’t matter. I know people are feeling anxious and uncertain. That their sense of confidence and pride in this country has been knocked. I understand that. I accept it and I want to change it. But what I cannot accept is Labour’s idea that all the worries you have are because of 14 years of Conservative government. And that all you need to do is change the people in office and these problems will magically disappear. It’s just not true.
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In the last 14 years, we’ve made progress in the most difficult conditions any governments has faced since the Second World War. A world leading economy, we’ve seen the 3rd highest growth rate in the G7, and created 4 million jobs, 800 a day. We took difficult decisions to restore our country’s financial security and control national debt, and that allowed us to support the country through Covid, deliver the fastest vaccine roll-out in the world, provide record funding to the NHS, and protect state pensions with the triple lock.
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He accused Labour of campaigning in a wholly negative way. In his speech he said:
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Labour have no ideas. What they did have they’ve U-turned on. They have just one thing. A calculation, that they can make you feel so bad about your country, that you won’t have the energy to ask what they might do with the incredible power that they seek to wield …
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I refuse to accept the doomsterism and the cynical narrative of decline that my opponents hope will depress people into voting for them.
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He declined to give enthusiastic backing to the prospect of having Boris Johnson campaign for the party at the election. Asked if he would welcome this, given that his speech was all about the future, he just said he wanted “every Conservative’” to be part of the campaign.
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He said President Putin had taken the world closer to nuclear war than it had been at any point since the Cuban missile crisis. In his speech he said:
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The dangers that threaten our country are real. They are increasing in number. An axis of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China is working together to undermine us and our values. War has returned to Europe, with our NATO allies warning that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, they might be next. War rages, too, in the Middle East as Israel defends itself not only against the terrorists of Hamas but a barrage of missiles fired – for the first time – directly from Iran. Right now in Africa, conflicts are being fought in 18 different countries. And Putin’s recklessness has taken us closer to a dangerous nuclear escalation than at any point since the Cuban missile crisis.
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He said artificial intelligence could double productivity within a decade. In his speech he said:
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Technologies like AI will do for the 21st century what the steam engine and electricity did for the 19th. They’ll accelerate human progress by complementing what we do, by speeding up the discovery of new ideas, and by assisting almost every aspect of human life. Think of the investment they will bring, the jobs they’ll create, and the increase in all our living standards they’ll deliver. Credible estimates suggest AI alone could double our productivity in the next decade. And in doing so, help us create a world of less suffering, more freedom, choice, and opportunity.
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Just imagine. Every child in school with their own personalised tutor, and every teacher free to spend more time personally developing each student. New frontiers in medical diagnostics where a single picture of your eyes can not only detect blindness but predict other diseases like heart attacks or Parkinson’s.
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He claimed that technological advances (as well as “post-Brexit regulatory freedoms”) could “fundamentally” reduce the risk posed by cancer. In his speech he said:
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Yet even here, if we are bold enough, there can be cause for new hope. We already know we can prevent most lung cancer cases – the UK’s leading cause of cancer deaths – by stopping smoking. That’s why I took the important decision to create a smokefree generation. And with huge breakthroughs in early diagnosis and new treatments, like the MRNA vaccine for skin cancer, I believe we can be just as bold and ambitious in improving rates of cancer survival.
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Because if we can bring together my vision of a country transformed, with our world class education system that trains the PhD oncologists and apprentice lab technicians, and our dynamic economy that attracts investors and incubates the billion-pound biotech businesses of the future, our post-Brexit regulatory freedoms to approve trials in a safe but faster way, and the scale of our NHS to help us research and trial those new drugs in a way no other country can, then just one example of the incredible achievements this country can make would be to make a generational breakthrough against this cruel disease and fundamentally change what it will mean for our children and grandchildren to hear the word cancer.
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This was probably the most boosterish passage in the whole speech. Even Boris Johnson never tried to argue that Brexit would cure…
Read Nore:Court rules Rwanda deportation law should not apply in Northern Ireland – UK politics live