Controversial Rwanda pact: Sunak avoids defeat in the House of Commons

The British House of Commons has approved the controversial law to deport migrants to Rwanda. The vote was seen as an important test for Prime Minister Sunak, who also encountered resistance within his own ranks because of the plans.

Great Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has prevailed against internal party resistance in the dispute over his country’s asylum policy. A new law intended to enforce deportations to Rwanda, East Africa, received the necessary votes in parliament this evening. 320 MPs voted for the bill, 276 voted against it.

The British government wants to deport people who come into the country without the necessary papers to Rwanda, regardless of their origin. They should apply for asylum there; there are no plans to return to Great Britain. The highest court in Great Britain criticized this as inadmissible.

For the right wing, plans don’t go far enough

The government now wants to declare the East African state, which critics accuse of human rights violations, a safe third country by law. This is intended to prevent a judicial review of the planned deportations as far as possible. This didn’t go far enough for the right wing of Sunak’s Conservative Party; some also wanted to make appeals to international courts impossible.

Moderate forces in the party rejected this – for fear of breaking international agreements. In the next step, the law will now go to the British House of Lords, which is the second chamber in the legislative process.

UNHCR criticizes British plans

Opponents of the project such as the UN refugee agency are outraged. They claim that there are no legal routes into the kingdom for asylum seekers. The plans also violated obligations to protect refugees. The fact that the government wants to place itself above court decisions by law also violates the separation of powers.

Britain has already paid hundreds of millions of pounds to Rwanda without anyone arriving there. The Labor Party speaks of a political trick. The Rwanda pact was once conceived by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson – according to critics, to distract from the “Partygate” scandal.