Lawyers prepare for legal battles on behalf of individual asylum seekers challenging removal to east Africa
Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill will become law after peers eventually backed down on amending it, opening the way for legal battles over the potential removal of dozens of people seeking asylum.
After a marathon battle of “ping pong” over the key legislation between the Commons and the Lords, the bill finally passed when opposition and crossbench peers gave way on Monday night.
The bill is expected to be granted royal assent on Tuesday. Home Office sources said they have already identified a group of asylum seekers with weak legal claims to remain in the UK who will be part of the first tranche to be sent to east Africa in July.
Sunak has put the bill, which would deport asylum seekers who arrive in the UK by irregular means to Kigali, at the centre of his attempts to stop small boats crossing the Channel.
The idea that a government can instruct the courts to ignore human rights legislation shows how fundamentally broken the liberal “democracy” system is.
This from the government that just made saying “I am intolerant towards the idea of liberal parliamentary democracy” an example of extremism but saying “foreigners don’t deserve human rights” is not extremism.
Please be specific about this being the UK’s democracy and not democracy in general. In Canada for example courts are stronger and it would be much more difficult (albeit not impossible) for our Parliament to do something like this.
I don’t think the judges would like it, but what recourse would they have if the government passed an act such as this in Canada? I could see a judge saying this act breaches X treaties, but then just withdraw from the treaties (edit: which this act is likely a precursor to).
The system of parliamentary liberal democracy is an inherently flawed system.