Small boat crossings (Image: Getty)
Downing Street has slammed Emmaunel Macron’s attack on Rishi Sunak’s landmark Rwanda policy insisting it is “right” to deport illegal migrants.
No 10 hit back after the French President said sending migrants to Africa is a “betrayal of values” and the “geopolitics politics of cynicism”.
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The French president made the comments during a speech on the future of Europe in which he warned the EU was in “mortal” danger from rising nationalism and fragmentation.
Mr Macron said the EU had made progress on immigration and asylum but could not be satisfied with its “returns policies because these are too divided”.
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In a clear reference to the Rwanda plan he said: “I also do not believe in this model that some people want to put in place which means that you go and look for a third country, for example in Africa, and take people who arrived illegally on our soil there who don’t come from that country.”
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Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron (Image: Getty)
“This will create a geopolitics of cynicism that is a betrayal of our values. It will create new dependencies and will prove totally ineffective.”
His sideswipe came on the day the plan was finally signed into law - meaning the first migrants earmarked for removal can be detained.
King Charles’ constitutional approval for the deportation scheme was announced in the House of Lords Friday morning - giving legal backing for Rishi Sunak’s intention to send small boat migrants to Kigali.
Officials can now begin the process of detaining the initial tranche of migrants they have identified for removal.
Many will be in taxpayer-funded hotels that are costing around ￡8 million every day to house.
Ministers are braced for lawyers to launch legal challenges against those earmarked for the first flights to Rwanda.
Responding to Mr Macron’s remarks the Prime Minister’s deputy spokeswoman said: “We don't agree. We think that our approach is the right one.”
“And indeed, we’ve seen other partners and other countries around the world also explore similar options”.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said “lazy criticism” of the Rwanda scheme is “distasteful” when asked about the French President’s remarks.
Declining to directly comment on the criticism, the Cabinet Minister said more broadly, “one of the things I find really distasteful, really distasteful, is I think the lazy criticism of Rwanda’s role in this”.
“People who basically say that we should not have a grown-up commercial relationship with African countries, that we should see them exclusively through the prism of aid recipients, I don’t buy that,” he told reporters at a Westminster lunch.
Earlier this week Mr Sunak revealed plans to get the first flights taking illegal migrants to Rwanda in the air in the next 10 to 12 weeks.
He said this would begin a “drum beat” of multiple flights every month although numbers on flights are expected to be, initially, less than two-dozen.
James Cleverly (Image: Getty)
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Mr Cleverly Rwanda admitted the scheme won’t be a “silver bullet” to solving the migrant crisis.
“There are no silver bullet solutions. Those people who crave simple silver bullet solutions, you’re in the wrong business, try children’s entertaining,” he said.
He added that “you need to do lots of things simultaneously” and denied that the Rwanda plan is central to the Prime Minister’s pledge to stop the boats.
“It is part of a range of things, including interrupting small boat supplies, interrupting illicit flows of money, arresting and charging and incarcerating the people smugglers.”
The bill - which is now formally known as the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 - states that Rwanda should be regarded as a safe country "for the purposes of relocating people, including in UK courts and tribunals" .
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Around 25 courtrooms have been made available and 150 judges will provide 5,000 sitting days.
Up to 800 "highly trained” officials will be ready to escort illegal migrants all the way to Rwanda once flights get underway.