Asylum-seekers and return hubs

You may be familiar with the previous Government’s Rwanda asylum scheme, whereby asylum-seekers who arrived in the UK would be sent to Rwanda and their asylum claims processed there. 

Unfortunately for the Government the Supreme Court (the top court in the UK) declared in a court judgement in November 2023 that the scheme was unlawful because Rwanda was not sufficiently safe or reliable. This however did not deter the then Home Secretary, and the Government pushed legislation through Parliament to make the scheme happen.

But then came the General Election in July 2024, the Government was dramatically overthrown, the new Labour Government was not interested in the Rwanda scheme, and it was abandoned. 

One interesting fact about the Supreme Court’s decision was that it did not declare that schemes such as the Rwanda scheme (which are often referred to as “return hub” schemes) were necessarily unlawful; it was just that that particular one was. It is worth knowing that the governing international treaty – the Refugee Convention – does not prohibit return hubs. 

Another interesting fact is that the New Labour Government is being a lot tougher on immigration and asylum-seekers than many people expected it to be. The Labour Party when in opposition was very critical of the Rwanda scheme but – guess what? – they are now considering a return hub scheme of their own. Hypocritical you might say, but we suppose that that is the nature of democratic adversarial politics. 

With the Rwanda scheme one of the things that really did not help the Government was that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – often referred to as the Refugee Agency – intervened in the Supreme Court case and submitted evidence to the effect that the scheme was flawed. The UNHCR is the international organisation that assists asylum-seekers and administers various schemes and matters in this connection. To put it short, it cares about asylum-seekers and refugees. 

It is fair to say that the UNHCR is well-respected, as evidenced for example by the fact that the UNHCR handbook on asylum is regarded as an authoritative text in the UK and elsewhere, and as also evidenced by the fact that its intervention before the Supreme Court was influential. 

The extent of the UNHCR’s powers are hard to pin down – it is not like a court which has the power to make legally-binding orders, but it nonetheless has a lot of political clout.

So we read with great interest that the UNHCR has at least initially given its blessing to the British Government’s new proposed return hub scheme. Hardly surprisingly Rwanda does not figure in this but the potential participating countries mentioned so far are Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia. 

The UNHCR evidently accepts that such a scheme can be legally acceptable if it is properly administered and incorporates appropriate safeguards. 

This gives the British Government’s plans an important boost. The Government, like its predecessor, has a large majority in the House of Commons and it would not be difficult for it to get controversial legislation through Parliament. And, in any case, many opposition MPs might agree with the plans. But the endorsement of the UNHCR provides something different and extra. The Prime Minister and other ministers are often going on about the importance of “international law”. Well, now that it looks as though the new scheme will have the backing of the UNHCR this surely makes it legally watertight.

We will keep you informed about further developments in this area. 

Oliver Westmoreland

Senior Immigration Lawyer