On July 5, 2024, London, England, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech outside No. 10 Downing Street after the election results were announced.
Claudia Greco | Reuters
New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday he would scrap a controversial plan to fly thousands of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda, his first major policy announcement since his election victory.
The previous Conservative government first announced plans in 2022 to send migrants arriving in the UK without permission to the East African country, saying it would eliminate asylum seekers arriving in the UK by small boats.
But due to years of legal challenges, no one has been sent to Rwanda under the program.
Starmer said at his first press conference as Prime Minister that the Rwandan policy would be scrapped because only about 1% of asylum seekers would be deported and it would not serve as a deterrent.
“Rwanda’s plan was dead and buried before it even started. It never served as a deterrent,” Starmer said. “I’m not going to continue to play tricks that don’t serve as a deterrent.”
Starmer won one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history on Friday, making him the most powerful British leader since former Prime Minister Tony Blair, but he faces a number of challenges, including improving struggling public services and Revitalize the sluggish economy.
Starmer answered about a dozen questions at a news conference in Downing Street and was repeatedly asked how and when he would start delivering on his promises to solve the country’s problems, but revealed little about his plans.
Asked whether he was willing to make tough decisions and raise taxes if necessary, Starmer said his government would identify problems and take action in areas such as tackling overstretching of the prison system and reducing long waiting times for use of state-run health services. .
“We’re going to have to make tough decisions and make them early, and we will. We’re going to do it with raw honesty,” he said. “But it’s not like there’s a precursor to some tax decision that we haven’t talked about before.”
Starmer said he would set up and chair different “mission delivery committees” to focus on so-called missions or priority areas such as health services and economic growth.
election issues
The question of how to stop asylum seekers from crossing the border from France is a theme in the six-week campaign.
While supporters say it will shatter the traffickers’ model, critics argue Rwanda’s policy is unethical and will never work.
In November last year, the UK’s Supreme Court declared the policy unlawful, saying Rwanda could not be considered a safe third country, prompting ministers to sign a new treaty with the East African country and pass new legislation to overturn the policy.
The legality of the move was challenged in court by charities and unions.
The British government has given hundreds of millions of pounds to the Rwandan government to set up accommodation and hire extra officers to deal with asylum seekers, but the money cannot be recovered.
Starmer said his government would set up a Border Security Command to bring together staff from the police, domestic intelligence agencies and prosecutors to work with international agencies to stop people smuggling.
Sonya Sceats, chief executive of Freedom from Torture, one of a number of organizations and charities working to stop the Rwanda plan, welcomed Starmer’s announcement on Saturday.
She said: “We commend Keir Starmer for taking immediate action to shut down this disgraceful scheme which was playing politics with the lives of people who have been tortured and persecuted.”
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