London:

The UK government has told the High Court in London that it expects the first deportation flights to Rwanda to take off between July 1 and July 15, a judge said on Friday.

Judge Martin Chamberlain disclosed the dates as he set a hearing for a forthcoming legal challenge to the controversial policy by the FDA union, which represents civil servants and public officials.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on April 22 that he expected the first flights to leave in “10 to 12 weeks”, but did not give an exact date.

The proposed dates for the first flights coincide with the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections in Rwanda on July 15.

The FDA wants a judicial review of a newly passed law that declares the east African country safe, despite a UK Supreme Court ruling that said removals were illegal.

The union wants clarity about whether the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act complies with the Civil Service Code.

Under the code, the UK’s politically neutral civil servants are legally obliged to “uphold the rule of law and administration of justice”.

The new law allows ministers to ignore parts of domestic and international human rights law when deciding on deportations, as well as any “Rule 39” injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights.

That would create a potential conflict, the FDA argues.

“Civil servants should never be left in a position where they are conflicted between the instructions of ministers and adhering to the Civil Service Code,” said FDA general secretary Dave Penman.

“Yet that is exactly what the government has chosen to do,” he said on Wednesday when lodging the judicial review application.

Judge Chamberlain decided that the FDA challenge would be held over one day in the first week of June.

“It appears from the claim that some civil servants believe, or have been advised, that it would be contrary to their terms and conditions to comply with a ministerial decision to proceed with Rwanda removals in the face of a rule 39 measure,” he said.

He added that there was “a powerful public interest in the determination of this claim in advance of the point when any rule 39 measure might be indicated”.

The Conservative government’s Rwanda policy is designed to deter huge numbers of migrants trying to get across the Channel to the UK from northern France on small boats.

It said this week it had begun detaining failed asylum seekers with a view to deporting them to Rwanda, sparking protests.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

This photo provided by the Prefecture Maritime du Nord et de la Manche shows migrants continuing their journey to Britain off northern France coast on April 23, 2024. Five people, including a child, died while trying to cross the English Channel from France to the U.K., French authorities said, just hours after the British government approved a migrant bill to deport some of those who entered the country illegally to Rwanda.
| Photo Credit: AP

Five persons, including a seven-year-old girl, died while attempting to cross the English Channel early on Tuesday morning, according to French authorities. The deaths occurred within hours of the British parliament passing a controversial law that would permit the deportation of those seeking asylum in the U.K. to Rwanda. The new law is primarily aimed at stopping migrants entering the U.K. on small boats crossing the Channel.

The overcrowded boat, carrying 110 people, left Wimereux, 32 km from Calais in France, as per a Reuters report. The boat stopped a few hundred metres from its origin, and several people fell into the water. According to the report, 47 people were brought back to land, and four admitted to the hospital. Another 57 individuals chose to stay on the boat heading to the U.K.

Also Read | Rishi Sunak says first migrant flight from U.K. to Rwanda will leave in 10-12 weeks

Mr. Sunak, who was on a trip to Warsaw on Tuesday, said the incident was “tragic” and said it underscored “why you need a deterrent”. A record number of individuals had arrived in the U.K. on small boats in the first quarter of 2024, according to U.K. government data.

“This Government is doing everything we can to end this trade, stop the boats and ultimately break the business model of the evil people smuggling gangs, so they no longer put lives at risk,” Home Secretary James Cleverly said on X.

The Safety of Rwanda Bill passed late on Monday night, after crossbench and opposition peers in the U.K. House of Lords stopped pressing for their amendments to go through in the final version of the Bill. Earlier in the process, the Upper House of parliament, where the Conservative Party of Mr. Sunak does not have a majority, had wanted to include amendments to the legislation exempting Afghans who had helped the U.K. military from deportation and setting up a committee to monitor the safety of Rwanda as a third country accepting asylum seekers.

Mr. Sunak, who said on Monday that the first flights carrying migrants to Rwanda would leave in 10-12 weeks, hailed the new law on as fundamentally changing the global equation on migration.

Core issue

“Our focus is to now get flights off the ground, and I am clear that nothing will stand in our way of doing that and saving lives,” he said. Migration is a core issue as the U.K. heads towards a general election and the plan to deport asylum seekers by flying them to Rwanda, has been in the works since 2022. However, the policy has been reshaped in response to the many legal challenges it has faced and not a single flight has taken off to date.

The opposition Labour Party’s shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, called the Rwanda policy an “extortionate election gimmick instead of a serious plan”.

Rights groups slam law

Several human rights groups including the UN refugee agency and the Council of Europe criticized the U.K.’s new law.

“The new legislation marks a further step away from the U.K.’s long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.

The Council of Europe’s human rights body chief, Michael O’Flaherty expressed a number of concerns including that the law “significantly excludes the ability of U.K. courts to fully and independently scrutinise the issues brought before them” by those claiming asylum.