- The Rwanda Bill has passed another stage in its passage through parliament after votes in both houses but it is not expected to be finalised until mid-April.
- A migrant from South Sudan has been jailed after piloting a small boat carrying more than 50 people across the Channel.
- The Commission on the Integration of Refugees has published a major new report in which it sets out 16 recommendations for fixing the UK’s asylum system which it describes as “broken”.
- Analysis from the National Audit Office has revealed that the government’s plan to save money by moving asylum seekers out of hotels and onto “large sites” will actually cost an additional £46 million over 10 years.
- Leaked documents have revealed that “major flaws” in a huge immigration database managed by the Home Office have affected at least 76,000 migrants and refugees.
The Rwanda bill has passed another stage in its passage through parliament, but it is not expected to be finalised until mid-April at the earliest. On 18 March, MPs overturned all 10 of the amendments that the House of Lords introduced earlier in the month. During the debate, Labour MP Neil Coyle referred to the recent report from the National Audit Office (NAO) that revealed that the Rwanda scheme could cost almost £2 million for each of the first 300 people who are sent to the country. “Is the minister aware that Virgin Galactic can send six people into space for less than this government wants to spend sending one person to Rwanda?” he asked Minister for Illegal Migration Michael Tomlinson. (A Virgin Galactic flight to the edge of space for six people was costed at £2.14m in summer 2023). On 19 March, the former chief inspector for borders and immigration, David Neal, told the House of Lords’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee that the Rwanda bill could become law without independent scrutiny and that the government had failed to publish his report on conditions for refugees in Rwanda. “The Rwanda country information report which was subject to supreme court scrutiny has not been published and that work has been done. That’s a particular problem,” he told members. Neal, who was fired from his position in February for speaking to journalists about his concerns over airport security, also suggested that the government could be “months away” from appointing his replacement with the result that the Rwanda bill “was not scrutinised by an independent watchdog”. On 20 March, the Rwanda bill returned to the House of Lords which inflicted seven more defeats on the government. As a result, the bill will now return to the House of Commons where it is likely that the seven amendments will be overturned, although this is not expected to take place until after MPs return from their Easter break on 15 April. Despite the delay, the government has insisted that it will still be able to meet its target of sending people to Rwanda “this spring”. The latest stage of the Rwanda bill’s passage through parliament has provoked the usual political reactions with Michael Tomlinson describing the House of Lords’ changes as “wrecking amendments” and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper describing the entire Rwanda scheme as “a failing farce”. In a letter that was published in the Times prior to the votes in the House of Lords on 20 March, the executive director of ECRE member organisation the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, highlighted the potentially negative impacts of the Rwanda scheme for people seeking asylum in the UK. “The biggest risk for the PM is not losing votes on the bill but the huge mess it will cause,” he wrote. He concluded: “A just and compassionate asylum system must provide safe routes and a fair hearing for those seeking safety on our shores. We need enduring solutions not inhumane policies”.will still be able to meet its target of sending people to Rwanda “this spring”. The latest stage of the Rwanda bill’s passage through parliament has provoked the usual political reactions with Michael Tomlinson describing the House of Lords’ changes as “wrecking amendments” and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper describing the entire Rwanda scheme as “a failing farce”. In a letter that was published in the Times prior to the votes in the House of Lords on 20 March, the executive director of ECRE member organisation the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, highlighted the potentially negative impacts of the Rwanda scheme for people seeking asylum in the UK. “The biggest risk for the PM is not losing votes on the bill but the huge mess it will cause,” he wrote. He concluded: “A just and compassionate asylum system must provide safe routes and a fair hearing for those seeking safety on our shores. We need enduring solutions not inhumane policies”. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovi said: “This Bill will not only prevent redress for the most serious human rights violations, but by specifically excluding asylum seekers from access to justice, it will also negate the principle of equality before the law.”
Attempts to reach the UK by small boat are continuing. On 20 March, more than 500 people crossed the Channel, reportedly the highest daily total so far in 2024. While the latest figure is remarkable in its own right, Jon Featonby from the Refugee Council reflected on the wider context of people crossing the Channel in small boats. “(…) over 19,000 people have now crossed the channel since the Illegal Migration Act gained Royal Assent. That Act will prevent any of those people having their asylum claim processed in the UK. Instead they’ll be left in a permanent limbo,” he wrote on X, adding: “Even if flights to Rwanda start, this isn’t the group of people they’ll focus on (it will be people who have been here for far longer). A small number might be able to be removed to their own country, but the vast majority will have their claim deemed permanently inadmissible”. Featonby also wrote: “For all the talk of reducing the asylum backlog/ending hotel use, the Illegal Migration Act will result in the exact opposite, creating what IPRR call a perma-backlog. People will face being left dependent on government support or being exploited in order to survive”. Elsewhere, on 20 March, Winchester Crown Court sentenced Choul Phan Maker, a 31-year-old man from South Sudan, to 20 months imprisonment for unlawful arrival and 10 months for assisting unlawful immigration with the two sentences to be served concurrently. Maker was arrested in August 2023 after piloting a dinghy carrying more than 50 people across the Channel. During his trial, he told the court that he had “agreed to steer the dinghy as he could not afford the crossing” and that he “did not know this would lead to imprisonment in the UK”. Commenting on the sentencing, Minister for Illegal Migration Michael Tomlinson said: “The criminal gangs behind these crossings don’t care if people live or die, as long as they pay, but they rely on migrants who are willing to steer their deadly crossings through the water”. Asylum and refugee specialist, Lou Calvey, wrote on X: “Another person criminalised because they steered the boat in return for free travel. Who does this help? A refugee in prison and organised crime continuing to operate”.
On the same day as the latest changes to the Rwanda bill were being voted on in the House of Lords, the independent Commission on the Integration of Refugees (CIR) published a new report which included 16 “evidence-based proposals for reform” aimed at fixing the UK’s “broken” asylum system. Described as “the most significant and detailed exploration of the UK asylum system in a generation”, the CIR’s recommendations include enabling asylum seekers to work in the UK after six months, free English language education from day one, the government meeting its target of processing asylum applications within six months, a “Government-backed finance scheme” to help refugees set up businesses, immediate access to education for asylum-seeking children, the reinstatement of a refugee minister and the involvement of people with lived experience as refugees. In an opinion piece in the Guardian about the report, CIR member Guli Francis-Dehqani wrote that “a new deal must be made for refugees in the UK – one that is fair, deliverable and accountable. The current system is expensive, cruel and broken. It’s time for a new approach”. Commenting on the recommendations, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby wrote on X: “It’s widely acknowledged that our asylum system is broken – it needs rebuilding with compassion, dignity and fairness at the centre. This requires thoughtful, well-informed consideration which promotes collaboration and common ground, not division”.
The NAO has published a report on the Home Office’s plans to reduce the number of hotel rooms used to accommodate asylum seekers by moving them to four “large sites”. According to the NAO report, the cost of moving people out of hotels and onto the Bibby Stockholm barge, two former military bases and some former student accommodation, would be £1.2 billion by 2034; £46m more than the cost of keeping them in the hotels. So far, only two of the four sites have been put into use with approximately 900 people being housed in them at the end of January. In addition to the extra costs involved, the damning NAO report also showed, inter alia, that the Home Office rated its own plans to develop large accommodation sites as “high risk or undeliverable” that it continued with the programme despite repeated assessments that it “could not be delivered as planned” and that it was now “resetting” its strategy and prioritising the development of smaller-scale alternatives. A Home Office spokesperson said that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers was “unacceptable” and that people “needed to be deterred from travelling to the UK with the Rwanda plan” in order to reduce the costs involved in the long-term. Enver Solomon said that the report showed another example of “bad policies being implemented badly at huge financial and human cost” while Jon Featonby compared the costs cited in the NAO report with the human and financial costs of the government’s so-called “Illegal Immigration Act”. “One of the things that should be worrying people is that this cost could be dwarfed by how much it will cost to implement the Illegal Migration Act, which will leave tens of thousands of people in permanent limbo,” he wrote on X.
In addition to issues regarding accommodation for asylum seekers, the Home Office has also been beset by a number of technical and legal problems. On 14 May, the Guardian reported that “major flaws” in a huge Home Office immigration database had resulted in “more than 76,000 people being listed with incorrect names, photographs or immigration status”. According to leaked documents seen by the newspaper, the problem, which is causing people’s data to be mixed up “often with that of complete strangers”, is leaving those people “unable to prove their rights to work, rent housing or access free NHS treatment”. David Neal told the House of Lords’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee: “The rush to have things automated is good but not if the data quality is poor. And I have said before that the quality of data is poor in the Home Office”. The Guardian also claimed that, in January, the Home Office “knowingly exacerbated the problem” when it “changed the way the database linked individuals’ records in order to improve their accuracy” for several million people. Reacting to the revelation that the Home Office had decided to proceed with the change despite knowing that “a few thousand people in the database (…) had other people’s passport details recorded on their records”, Neal said: “The fact that the Home Office appears to have priced in these errors should be a matter of deep concern”. “It echoes the Windrush scandal, which is still affecting the department to this day,” he added. The revelations about the latest government IT fiasco, comes less than two weeks after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that the government’s pilot scheme to put GPS monitoring tags on migrants contravened data protection laws. Although the pilot scheme to place ankle tags on, and track the GPS location of, up to 600 migrants who arrived in the UK and were on immigration bail ended in December 2023, the Home Office “will continue to be able to access the personal information gathered throughout the pilot until all the data has been deleted or anonymised,” the ICO wrote in a statement. The ICO issued an enforcement notice requiring the Home Office to update its internal policies, access guidance and privacy information in relation to the data retained from the pilot scheme. It also issued a formal warning stating that any future processing by the Home Office on the same basis would be in breach of data protection law and would attract enforcement action. Commenting on the ICO’s decision, the NGO Privacy International wrote on X: “Today’s decision is a powerful reminder that migrants have the same data protection rights as everyone else. And a serious warning to immigration authorities who’ve been abusing migrants’ privacy to exercise performative power and control that they’re not above the law”.
For further information:
- ECRE, UK: Rwanda Bill Saga Continues with ‘Bribes’ for Rejected Asylum Seekers ― Details of Deceased Asylum Seekers Kept Hidden ― Shipping Containers to Accommodate Sick Migrant Children Condemned― Rotten Food Fed to Asylum Seekers ― Legal Battles for Asylum Seekers’ Rights, March 2024
- ECRE, UK: Record Number of Asylum Requests Granted but Huge Backlogs Remain and Channel Crossings and Deaths Continue ― Demands for Enquiries into Maritime Search and Rescue Responses and Treatment of Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children ― More Setbacks for Rwanda Bill Amid Revelations About High Costs of Policy ― Agreement to Work with “Calais Group” to Disrupt Supply of Small Boats ― Minister Discusses Possible Migration Co-operation with Libya, March 2024