Suella Braverman: No set date for stopping Channel crossings

Suella Braverman has refused to commit to a date for achieving the government’s aim of stopping small migrant boats crossing the Channel.

The home secretary told the BBC she wanted to deliver on the pledge as quickly as possible.

But she admitted the government was facing an ongoing legal challenge over its Rwanda plan, and that it could not control court timeframes.

The PM has said stopping migrant crossings is one of his top priorities.

Ms Braverman told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “The prime minister’s made the key pledge to stop the boats, it’s going to be pretty obvious when we’ve succeeded in achieving that.

“I’m not going to put clear dates on everything.”

Under the government’s plans, people who arrive in the UK through illegal routes could be sent to Rwanda on a one-way ticket to claim asylum there.

In December the High Court ruled the plan was legal, but the decision is currently going through an appeals process.

Last month several papers reported that a source in the Home Office had claimed there were plans to get flights to Rwanda off the ground by the summer.

But the government has not committed to a timeframe publicly.

“There’s a hearing later this month, we need to wait for the court to adjudicate,” Ms Braverman said.

“I can’t control court deadlines and therefore we will respect any decision from the court but we have to abide by the timelines set by the judges.”

Labour’s shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy said the Rwanda policy was “a con trick being perpetrated on the British people”, as it would most likely never materialise.

She added that it had cost the taxpayer “a huge amount of money and hasn’t seen a single person go to Rwanda”.

The Liberal Democrats said Ms Braverman’s comments showed that the Rwanda plan was “unworkable” and “on hold”.

The government has also recently introduced new legislation that would place a duty on the home secretary to detain and remove those arriving in the UK illegally, either to Rwanda or another “safe” third country.

People removed from the UK would be blocked from returning, or seeking British citizenship in future.

The legislation is currently making its way through Parliament but still needs to be approved by MPs and peers.

Ms Braverman said she believed the plans would have “a significant deterrent effect” so that people would stop making the journey across the Channel.

She insisted Rwanda was a safe country, despite evidence from the United Nations refugee agency that in 2018 a group of Congolese refugees were shot dead by police during protests over their living conditions in a Rwandan camp.

The home secretary said she was “not familiar with that particular case”, but added: “That might be 2018, we’re looking at 2023 and beyond. The High Court, senior expert judges, have looked into the detail of our arrangement with Rwanda and found it to be a safe country and found our arrangements to be lawful.”

She added that the country “have a track record of successful resettling and integrating people who are refugees or asylum seekers” and that the government’s legislation made provisions for “extreme circumstances”, where there is “unforeseeable, serious and irreversible harm”, for individuals to challenge the decision to send them to Rwanda.

It was also notable that Ms Braverman would not repeat her previously stated hope of getting legal immigration under 100,000 – not least because there is tension in the cabinet over what is realistic.

Last October, the home secretary said her “ultimate aspiration” was to get net migration down into the tens of thousands.

Pressed repeatedly on whether she still wanted this to happen, she said: “I support our manifesto commitment to get overall migration numbers down, including legal migration.”

She added that the large numbers coming to work and study in the UK put pressure on housing, schools and health services.

“Those are reasonable concerns and we need to make sure we’re getting the balance right of encouraging our domestic workforce back into the labour market and also ensuring that we do allow those highly skilled workers, those people who will come and help various sectors in our economy to thrive,” she said.

Last year, UK net migration hit a record high of 504,000.