The Home Office has achieved a clear win for its Rwanda policy in the high court, but eight individual asylum seekers – who have between them suffered torture, trafficking and other forms of persecution – have also won their cases after judges quashed the decisions to forcibly remove them.
The asylum seekers, who all arrived in the UK on small boats, came from a range of countries including conflict zones such as Syria and places where they experienced persecution such as Iran.
Some were found to have been under the control of smugglers on their journeys and were not in a position to claim asylum before they reached the UK.
The two judges who made the ruling, Lord Justice Lewis and Mr Justice Swift, identified multiple flaws in the eight decisions and quashed the cases on this basis.
In the case of one Kurdish asylum seeker from Syria, whose claim was based on his fear of the militia group the Kurdish YPG, who wanted to recruit him to fight Syrians, the judges found that there were a number of flaws in the reasoning of Home Office officials in declaring his claim inadmissible in the UK and suitable for forced removal to Rwanda.
According to the judgment: “There are a number of flaws in the reasoning contained in the 5 July 2022 inadmissibility decision. The decision took account of the wrong facts.”
It emerged that Home Office officials had confused his case with that of another Syrian asylum seeker. “This was not an immaterial error,” the judges found.
In the case of another Kurdish man from Iran, who the Home Office decided was a suitable candidate for Rwanda, judges found officials did not consider evidence that had been put forward. They ordered the home secretary to consider the matter again.
In the case of an Iranian man, the judges highlighted the fact that one team at the Home Office had not passed on information about the case to another team. That decision too was quashed.
Home Office sources said: “Before the judgment today, we had already taken steps to strengthen the case-working process, including by revising the information and guidance given to individuals during their assessment for relocation.
“In light of today’s judgment, we will continue to improve and strengthen the decision-making process further in line with the recommendations from the court, to ensure decisions are as robust as possible and to prevent successful challenges in future.
“We remain fully committed to delivering this partnership and welcome the court’s ruling today that it is lawful, as we have argued all along.”
Paul O’Connor, head of bargaining at PCS union, which was one of the claimants in the Rwanda challenge, said: “It’s clear that neither collective nor individual litigation about Rwanda is going to go away any time soon. The threat of asylum seekers being sent to Rwanda isn’t acting as a deterrent. The only way to stop people drowning in the Channel or making dangerous journeys in dinghies is to adopt safe passage policies for asylum seekers.”
