PM vows to push through ‘humane’ Rwanda plan despite legal backlash 

The prime minister said this afternoon that he will deliver plans to offshore asylum processing to Rwanda, despite challenges from “legal eagles”.

Boris Johnson told journalists on the local election campaign trail earlier today that:  “we [the government] will get it done”.   

“There are bound to be legal challenges but this is something that we agreed,” he explained, going on: “the migration and economic partnership is something that we agreed with Rwanda, it is a great deal between two countries, each helping the other, and yes, of course there are going to be legal eagles, liberal left lawyers who will try to make this difficult.   

“We always knew this was going to happen. But it is a very, very sensible thing. If people are coming across the Channel illegally and if their lives are being put at risk by ruthless and unscrupulous gangsters which is what is happening at the moment, you need a solution.

“You need something that is going to say to those people, to those gangsters, ‘I am sorry but you can’t tell your customers, you can’t tell these poor people that they are just going to come to the UK and they are going to be lost in the system’ because we are going to find a way of making sure that they go immediately to Rwanda. 

 “I think that is a humane, compassionate and sensible thing to do,” he stressed.

Former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage wrote in an opinion piece for the Telegraph newspaper today that if flights to Rwanda for asylum seekers did not “start soon.. the government is going to be overwhelmed by this crisis.”