The Bill gives the Home Office powers to detain and remove those who arrive in the UK without permission to their home country or to a third country such as Rwanda.
Peers voted to compel the home secretary to consider asylum claims from unauthorised routes if they have not been removed within six months, and to protect LGBTQ+ people against removal to inappropriate countries, including Rwanda.
They voted against plans to relax the current 24-hour limit on detention of unaccompanied migrant children, the 72-hour limit on detention of accompanied children (or one week with ministerial approval), and the 72-hour limit on the detention of pregnant women.
Last week, the Lords voted against plans to backdate deportations to 7 March, and for modern slavery safeguards and asylum help for unaccompanied children to be included in the Bill.
AAA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 745, handed down last week, concerned Home Office plans to send ten asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing. They were from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Sudan and Albania, and arrived in the UK in small boats from France.
Granting the appeal, Lord Burnett, Sir Geoffrey Vos and Lord Justice Underhill, in a lengthy 161-page judgment, found there was a ‘real risk’ the asylum claims could be wrongly refused and ‘real risk’ of refoulement.
Ben Keith, barrister at 5 St Andrew’s Hill, said: ‘The court found there were fundamental problems with the Rwandan asylum system which could not be glossed over by the memorandum of understanding.
‘They also commented that there remain concerns about Rwanda’s use of torture and repression of dissent but did not finally determine the point.’
Welcoming the decision, Law Society president Lubna Shuja said the ruling provided further evidence the government’s Illegal Migration Bill is ‘fatally flawed’.
Shuja said: ‘The government has only secured one removals agreement, which is with Rwanda, that has now been ruled unlawful.’
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