The UK’s highest court has ruled the Rwanda asylum policy is unlawful.
The government had said its plan to deport asylum seekers to east Africa and ban them from returning was needed to deter illegal small boat crossings.
But the Supreme Court ruled it was possible the Rwandan government would send people back to the country they had fled in the first place.
It said the policy breaches human rights laws by potentially leaving the people sent there open to that risk.
The UK’s most senior court was asked to rule on an appeal by the government after the Court of Appeal decided the policy was unlawful in June.
The legal case against the policy hinges on the principle of “non-refoulement” – that a person seeking asylum should not be returned to their country of origin if doing so would put them at risk of harm – which is established under both UK and international human rights law.
Ten claimants in the case argued that ministers had ignored clear evidence that Rwanda’s asylum system was unfair and arbitrary.
In a unanimous decision, the five Supreme Court justices agreed with the Court of Appeal that there had not been a proper assessment of whether Rwanda was safe.
The judgment does not ban sending migrants to another country, but it leaves the £140m Rwanda scheme in tatters – and it is not clear which other nations are prepared to do a similar deal with the UK.
In their judgement, the Supreme Court justices said there were “substantial grounds” to believe people deported to Rwanda could then be sent, by the Rwandan government, to places where they would be unsafe.
It said the Rwandan government had entered into the agreement in “good faith” but the evidence cast doubt on its “practical ability to fulfil its assurances, at least in the short term”, to fix “deficiencies” in its asylum system and see through “the scale of the changes in procedure, understanding and culture which are required”.