Ministers ‘face backlash over flights to Rwanda’

The Home Office was today warned it would face a public backlash of “sheer horror” if it begins to send women and children to Rwanda as its top civil servants admitted that families could be on board future flights.

Matthew Rycroft, the Home Office permanent secretary, told the Commons Home Affairs select committee that although the “vast majority” of migrants who would be flown to Kigali would be single men, ministers had not ruled out putting women on board.

His Home Office colleague, second permanent secretary Tricia Hayes, said the main reason for failing to state that women and families would not be sent to Rwanda was to avoid creating a “new business model” for people smugglers.

But the committee chairwoman, the Labour mp Dame Diana Johnson, suggested that instead the Home Office’s silence on the matter was because it feared a hostile public reaction if the threat to women and children was made clear.

“Are you worried that the backlash from the general public would be one of sheer horror when you’re thinking about sending women and families to Rwanda,” she asked the civil servants during a hearing in Parliament today.

It came as Dominic Raab said that the Government will take a “robust approach” towards ensuring that future Rwanda migrant removal flights take off, as a row broke out over plans to limit the power of European judges over British decisions.

The Justice Secretary said a new Bill of Rights being unveiled today would stop the European Court of Human Rights adopting “elastic” interpretations of the law to override the will of Parliament and the decisions of UK courts.

He said that as well as barring judges in Strasbourg from using injunctions, the “common sense” reform would make it easier to deport foreign criminals and prevent extremists in prison blocking attempts to segregate them by claiming a human right to socialise.

Mr Raab added: “I fully support the Home Secretary in taking a robust approach and that’s the way we’re going to approach the litigation we still face.”

But critics hit back by condemning the new legislation as another “Orwellian turn” from the Government and a “lurch backwards” that would weaken human rights for all.

Stephanie Boyce, the president of the Law Society, said it was a “lurch backwards for British justice” that would “grant the state greater unfettered power over the people”.

Sophie Kemp, a partner at the law firm Kingsley Napley, added: “Calling Dominic Raab’s proposals a ‘Bill of Rights’ is another Orwellian turn from this Government. It is, in fact, a worrying ‘Bill of Restrictions’.”