Rwanda law suffers Northern Ireland setback

Arion McNicoll, The Week UK
·2 min read
Migrants crossing the English channel in a small boat.
Migrants crossing the English channel in a small boat.

Parts of Rishi Sunak's Rwanda deportation act should be "disapplied" in Northern Ireland because they undermine the province's human rights protections, a high court judge has ruled.

Belfast High Court Justice Michael Humphreys said the Illegal Migration Act, a crucial element of the "Rwanda plan", conflicts with the Windsor Framework, the arrangement agreed with the EU to regularise Northern Ireland's status after Brexit.

The framework "deals mostly with trade issues", said the BBC, but also includes a commitment to the "human rights provisions that flow from the Good Friday Agreement".

Justice Humphreys found in favour of a legal challenge brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and a 16-year-old Iranian asylum seeker, ruling that multiple elements of the Act "infringe the protection afforded" by the Good Friday Agreement.

The judgment is significant because it could make deporting migrants to Rwanda impossible if they travel to Northern Ireland.

"Oh, dear!" said Sky News's chief political correspondent Jon Craig. Sunak's Safety of Rwanda Act was "supposed to prevent this sort of legal challenge". But with the "ink barely dry on the act", Humphreys's ruling "bodes ill for the PM" and "potentially opens the door to more legal challenges".

The DUP warned that the ruling could make Northern Ireland a "magnet" for migrants. Gavin Robinson, the party's interim leader, called on the government to "assert the sovereignty of parliament and ensure that we have a UK-wide immigration system".

A "clearly annoyed" Sunak said that the judgment would not prevent the first flights to Rwanda taking off as planned this summer, Craig wrote for Sky News. The government is considering an appeal.

Although this case dealt specifically with provisions relating to Northern Ireland's legal framework, the challenge is "likely to form part of a wider attack" on the Rwanda plan, the BBC said, as critics believe it relies on laws that "breach basic safeguards for all refugees in the UK".