Britain's Home Secretary said Wednesday the government maintains "relentlessly focused" on driving down "small boat crossings," after the UK's Supreme Court ruled that the government’s contentious plan to send some migrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda is illegal.
It struck a major blow to a key policy of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government that has drawn international attention and criticism.
It struck a major blow to a key policy of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government that has drawn international attention and criticism.
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00:00 We are absolutely determined to maintain the deterrent effect of the Rwanda scheme.
00:06 To an extent it is already demonstrating utility by the fact that we know anecdotally,
00:10 and I'm not going to over-interpret these figures, that we know the fear of this as part of our arsenal
00:17 is already having a deterrent effect, which is exactly what it was designed to do.
00:26 National governments can't just vote themselves out of international commitments,
00:31 and they are things I recognise as a former Foreign Secretary are incredibly powerful tools
00:36 as we try and do good around the wide world.
00:38 I give him this commitment.
00:39 We remain relentlessly focused on making sure that we continue to drive down these small boat crossings
00:46 using the full range of capabilities at our disposal.
00:49 Will the Secretary of State give us a commitment that if the European Court of Human Rights continues to be a barrier
00:57 to the will of this House, that the government will take action and will ignore the demands of the Human Rights Court?
01:05 One of the points that I took from the judgement today is that it's not just about the ECHR.
01:13 Their Lordships set out a number of international commitments that we have made,
01:18 but they also set out what we need to do to get the Rwanda plan up and running,
01:23 and it's on a very specific legal point, which we are already in the process of addressing.
01:28 And I would respectfully disagree with him, because small boat arrivals are down
01:33 as opposed to almost everywhere else in Europe where they are significantly up.
01:37 The use of hotel bed spaces is down because of the arrangements that we have put in place.
01:43 The speed of processing has increased and the volume of processing of asylum claims has significantly increased.
01:51 We will continue to ensure that we abide by the rule of law,
01:57 and we have proven we can do both, while simultaneously delivering on the commitments we made
02:04 to drive down illegal migration and stop the boats.
02:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]