Suella Braverman has demanded Rishi Sunak cuts the spin and gets real about Rwanda, or risk another year of delay and defeats.
She said MPs’ Christmas holiday must also be cancelled so they can sit and debate the new emergency legislation before the end of the year.
The demand is part of her new five-point plan to get the Rwanda deal sorted once and for all.
In an op-ed this evening, the former Home Secretary set out five key tests Mr Sunak’s new emergency legislation must achieve in order for Rwanda to succeed.
- Address the Supreme Court’s concerns regarding Rwanda
- Enable flights before the election and circumvent further court appeals
- Those arriving illegally must be removed in a matter of days rather than months
- Legal challenges to detaining those who arrive here must be excluded
- The bill must be introduced by the Christmas recess, and MPs should sit over Christmas to debate it.
After writing an incendiary letter to Rishi Sunak following her sacking, the former Home Secretary said she welcomed the Prime Minister’s decision to push through emergency legislation to send those who come to Britain illegally to Rwanda.
However, she warns the Government must finally end the “self-deception and spin” in order to achieve its aims.
“There must be no more magical thinking. Tinkering with a failed plan will not stop the boats”.
Ms Braverman wrote in the Telegraph that the fundamental question at stake is “where does ultimate authority in the United Kingdom sit?”
“Is it with the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament?
“Or is it with the vague, shifting, and unaccountable concept of ‘international law’?”
While Ms Braverman said there is no point in wasting energy “on a post-mortem of how we got here”, she warned that the Government lost in the Supreme Court because judges determined Rwanda cannot be trusted to not send asylum seekers back to their home country.
She argued that Mr Sunak’s primary plan of signing a new treaty with Rwanda will therefore make little difference.
In addition, she argued the Government cannot waste another year trying to push the policy through the courts.
“Even if we won in the domestic court, the saga would simply relocate to Strasbourg where the European court would take its time deciding if it liked our laws.”
