Johnson slammed for using Brexit to justify sending migrants to Rwanda

Brexiteer David Davis slams Boris Johnson for using the UK’s EU departure to justify plan to send economic migrants to Rwanda – as Priti Patel’s local bishop joins church criticism of scheme

  • Ex-Brexit minister attacked the £120m scheme saying: ‘We are better than this’
  • Said ‘outsourcing’ obligations ‘not the freedoms that Brexit was about winning’
  • PM said last week ‘innovative’ scheme was ‘made possible by Brexit freedoms’

Boris Johnson was castigated by a hardline Brexiteer today for using the EU split to justify sending cross-channel migrants to Rwanda. 

Former Brexit minister David Davis attacked the £120m scheme to send those arriving illegally in Britain to the African nation, saying ‘we are better than this’.

Unveiling the five-year agreement with Kigali last week, Mr Johnson invoked the referendum pledge of ‘taking back control’ of the UK’s borders, saying it was an ‘innovative approach made possible by Brexit freedoms’.

But writing in the Times today, Mr David, who has become a backbench critic of Mr Johnson, said: ‘The plan is fraught with practical problems, beset by moral dilemmas and hamstrung by extortionate costs. 

‘And outsourcing our international obligations are certainly not the freedoms that Brexit was about winning.’

He said that while it was ‘laudible’ to try to cut down on cross-Channel migrants, ‘there is little evidence that outsourcing our obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees is going to break the people smugglers’ business model’.

It came as the Church of England opposition to the plan grew with Priti Patel’s local bishop joining the chorus of disapproval.

After church leaders including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York became embroiled in a row with ministers at the weekend, The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Rev Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani said it was ‘cruel and inhumane’.

Dr Francis-Dehqani, who arrived in the UK as a refugee from Iran in the 1970s, said: ‘Those who find their way to this country, often through treacherous means, deserve to have their cases considered and processed here.’ 

Former Brexit minister David Davis attacked the £120m scheme to send those arriving illegally in Britain to the African nation, saying ‘we are better than this’.

Writing in the Times today, Mr David, who has become a backbench critic of Mr Johnson, said: ‘The plan is fraught with practical problems, beset by moral dilemmas and hamstrung by extortionate costs.

Unveiling the five-year agreement with Kigali last week, Mr Johnson invoked the referendum pledge of ‘taking back control’ of the UK’s borders, saying it was an ‘innovative approach made possible by Brexit freedoms’.

Migrants travelling to the UK on small boats will be put on jets and sent to Rwanda while their applications are processed. Pictured: A map detailing the plan proposed by the Prime Minister

Former immigration minister Brandon Lewis defended the Rwanda immigration plan as the ‘humanitarian thing to do’.

The Northern Ireland Secretary told BBC Breakfast this morning: ‘I’ve been immigration minister, this is a really difficult area.

‘There are horrible scenes and stories of what these people smugglers put these people through.

‘We’ve got to break this business model and doing something like this with Rwanda, which has such a strong track record, is right for the people of the UK, who can be rightly proud of our humanitarian support because this is a humanitarian thing to do.

‘It is ensuring that we are deterring people from taking a treacherous as well as illegal journey to the UK.’

Asked about civil servants reportedly having raised objections to the scheme over its possible cost, Mr Lewis said: ‘I do think it will work.’

Former archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams yesterday became the latest high-profile ecclesiastical leader to attack the £120million programme that would see economic migrants arriving in the Uk illegally sent to Africa.

He joined his successor and the incumbent Archbishop Justin Welby, and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell in questioning the morality of the plan, labelling it ‘sinful’.

However ministers have hit back at the church leaders, accusing them of throwing criticism without suggesting a viable alternative to halt the small boats carrying thousands of people across the Straits of Dover. 

Dr Williams was today asked about the scheme in a Times Radio interview. ‘Is the policy sinful? I think, in a word, yes,’ he told the broadcaster.

‘I think that without commenting on the motivation, or moral standing, of any individual involved, the policy itself seems to me to be not in accord with, with what I understand about God.’

Archbishop Justin yesterday used his Easter Sunday sermon to launch a scathing criticism of Home Secretary Priti Patel’s deal, signed in Kigali last week. 

On Sunday morning, the Archbishop told his Canterbury congregation that the UK has a duty as a ‘Christian country’ to not ‘sub-contract our responsibilities’ after anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since January 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under a new deal.

But it sparked a hardline response from Ms Patel and other ministers, who invited him to come up with with a better idea or stop carping from the sidelines. Ms Patel resurrected the row on Easter Monday, using an opinion piece in the Times to attack her critics. 

Dr Williams was today asked about the scheme in a Times Radio interview. ‘Is the policy sinful? I think, in a word, yes,’ he told the broadcaster.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (pictured today) blasted the government’s Rwanda plan for asylum seekers as the ‘opposite of the nature of God’ 

Without naming the head of the Church of England in a joint article with Rwandan foreign minister Vincent Biruta, she wrote: ‘We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans fail to offer their own solutions.’

Minister Greg Hands was even more direct on a round of interviews today. Asked about Welby’s intervention he told Sky News: ”I think what others, the critics of this plan, need to do is to show what their solution would be.’

The Government has  said the £120million, five-year plan would help to break people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants across the Channel, which has faced immediate and heavy criticism from politicians and charities.

It would see economic migrants who arrive in the Uk illegally handed a one-way ticket to Rwanda to start a new life there .

Mr Welby said the ‘serious’ ethical questions’ over sending asylum seekers abroad cannot ‘stand the judgment of god’. 

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