What’s your plan then, Archbishop? Ministers blast Justin Welby over Rwanda migrant plan criticism

Boris Johnson‘s government was locked in a furious battle with the Archbishop of Canterbury today after he blasted plans to send economic migrants to Rwanda.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby used his Easter Sunday sermon to launch a scathing criticism of Home Secretary Priti Patel‘s deal to deter Channel migrant crossings by packing them off to Africa.

But it sparked a hardline response from Ms Patel and other ministers, who invited him to come up with with a better idea or stop carping from the sidelines.

On Sunday morning, the Archbishop told his Canterbury congregation that the UK has a duty as a ‘Christian country’ to not ‘sub-contract our responsibilities’ after anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since January 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under a new deal.

Ms Patel resurrected the row on Easter Monday, using an opinion piece in the Times to attack her critics. Without naming the head of the Church of England in a joint article with Rwandan foreign minister Vincent Biruta, she wrote: ‘We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans fail to offer their own solutions.’

Minister Greg Hands was even more direct on a round of interviews today. Asked about Welby’s intervention he told Sky News: ”I think what others, the critics of this plan, need to do is to show what their solution would be.’

The Government has  said the £120million, five-year plan would help to break people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants across the Channel, which has faced immediate and heavy criticism from politicians and charities.

It would see economic migrants who arrive in the Uk illegally handed a one-way ticket to Rwanda to start a new life there .

Mr Welby said the ‘serious’ ethical questions’ over sending asylum seekers abroad cannot ‘stand the judgment of god’. 

He was joined in his sentiments by Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell who called it ‘depressing and distressing’.   

But Tory MPs have called the Archbishop of Canterbury’s stinging intervention over the government’s plan to send thousands of migrants with a one-way ticket to Rwanda ‘clumsy’. 

Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, a committed Catholic, said the government is not ‘abandoning’ migrants but taking on a ‘very difficult responsibility’ with the ‘intention’ of doing good’ which he said is important within Christianity.  

Other Tory MPs John Redwood, Mike Wood and Tom Hunt also blasted Mr Welby’s comments with Mr Hunt saying the Archbishop should be wary of ‘clumsily intervening’ into political issues. 

Mr Welby also called for a ceasefire in the Russian war on Ukraine and spoke of his concern for families struggling during the cost-of-living crisis and for those bereaved by Covid-19.  

In his 8.10am sermon, the Archbishop said: ‘The resurrection of Jesus is not a magic wand that makes the world perfect.

‘But the resurrection of Christ is the tectonic shift in the way the cosmos works. It is the conquest of death and the opening of eternal life – through Jesus, a gift offered to every human being who reaches out to him.

‘Not just for individuals but setting a benchmark for all of society because God is lord of every society and nation.’ 

He will continue: ‘Let this be a time for Russian ceasefire, withdrawal and a commitment to talks. 

‘This is a time for resetting the ways of peace, not for what Bismarck called blood and iron. Let Christ prevail. Let the darkness of war be banished.

‘And this season is also why there are such serious ethical questions about sending asylum seekers overseas. 

‘The details are for politics and politicians. The principle must stand the judgment of God, and it cannot. It cannot carry the weight of resurrection justice, of life conquering death.

‘It cannot carry the weight of the resurrection that was announced first to the least valued, for it privileges the rich and strong.

‘And it cannot carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values, because sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures on the cross.’  

He also said the love of god and hope triumphs over ‘nightmares’ and ‘global power’.   

Echoing Mr Welby over his thoughts on the migrant scheme, the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said at York Minster ‘we can do better than’ the Rwanda scheme. 

Mr Cottrell said: ‘It is so depressing and distressing this week to find that asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and oppression from deeply, deeply troubled parts of the world will not be treated with the dignity and compassion that is the right of every human being, and instead of being dealt with quickly and efficiently here on our soil will be shipped to Rwanda. 

‘We can do better than this. We can do better than this because of what we see in Jesus Christ, the risen Christ, with a vision for our humanity where barriers are broken down, not new obstacles put in the path.

‘After all, there is in law no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker. It is the people who exploit them that we need to crack down on, not our sisters and brothers in their need. We don’t need to build more barriers and cower in the darkness of the shadows they create.’

Jacob Rees-Mogg, speaking on Radio 4’s The World This Weekend programme, said he disagrees with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s interpretation of the Government’s new immigration policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. 

He said: ‘I think he misunderstands what the policy is trying to achieve, and that it isn’t an abandonment of responsibility, it is in fact a taking on of a very difficult responsibility.

‘The problem that is being dealt with is that people are risking their lives in the hands of people traffickers, to get into this country illegally.

‘Now, it’s not the illegal bit of it, it is the encouragement of people traffickers that needs to be stopped.’

He said ‘90% of people coming are young men who by coming via people traffickers are jumping the queue for others’. 

The Brexit opportunities minister also suggested the Government’s immigration plan creates an ‘opportunity for Rwanda’.

He said: ‘What is being done is providing an opportunity for Rwanda because it will provide Rwanda, a country that needs support and has gone through terrible troubles… and the Rwandan story is almost an Easter story of redemption, isn’t it?

‘Of a country that suffered the most appalling and horrific genocide and is now recovering and therefore the UK supporting it must be a good thing.

‘It helps people come through legitimate routes and I think the aim of the policy – within Christianity intention is always very important – and the intention of the Government is to do good.

‘It is to help those in genuine need of asylum and to make it harder for crime to prosper, and that I think, is fundamentally important.’

Mr Reese-Mogg had previously stated he ‘took his whip from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church rather than the [Tory party’s] Whip’s Office’.

The MP for Ipswich Tom Hunt took to Twitter to blast Mr Welby, saying: ‘The leaders of the Church of England should be wary about clumsily intervening into complex political issues at the best of times. 

‘To do so on Easter Sunday feels very wrong. Archbishop of York views particularly wrong headed. Claims he’s in tune with majority of the public.’ 

John Redwood, the MP for Wokingham, called on the Archbishop of Canterbury to ‘forgive and reconcile’ instead of ‘sharpening political divisions’.

He said in a Tweet: ‘I thought the Easter message was love conquers all. We should forgive and reconcile. Could the Archbishop help do that instead of sharpening political divisions? 

And Mr Redwood also wrote: ‘So what is the Archbishop’s proposal on how to stop the lucrative and illegal trade by people traffickers? Why does he want to live with law breaking and dangerous voyages?’ 

Mike Wood MP also told GB News: ‘They were unwise comments… This will help to reduce the tragic losses at sea that we’ve had.’ 

It comes as an exchange of letters published by the Home Office on Saturday night showed the department’s Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft warned Home Secretary Priti Patel that although the policy was ‘regular, proper and feasible’, there was ‘uncertainty surrounding the value for money of the proposal’.

But issuing a rare ministerial direction compelling the plans to go ahead despite the concern, Ms Patel said that ‘without action, costs will continue to rise, lives will continue to be lost’.

The Home Office insisted the UK has a ‘proud history’ of supporting those in need and that Rwanda is a ‘fundamentally safe and secure country with a track record of supporting asylum seekers’.

The policy has enjoyed some support from Conservative MPs, who say the issue of small boats crossing the Channel is high on the priority list for constituents.

Ms Patel said she expects other countries to follow the UK’s example, suggesting Denmark could be among those to reproduce the Government’s ‘blueprint’, while the Home Office insisted its approach is not in breach of refugee agreements.

Speaking about the cost-of-living crisis and the pandemic, the Archbishop Mr Welby also said: ‘In the UK we might be waking up to lighter mornings and warmer days.

‘But families across the country are waking up to cold homes and empty stomachs as we face the greatest cost-of-living crisis – we have known in our lifetimes.

‘And because of this, they wake up with fear. 

‘Further afield people are waking up to horrors they never imagined possible. 

‘Last month president Zelensky gave a speech in which he said ‘the end of the world has arrived’. 

‘Ukrainians have woken up to the end of the world as they knew it. 

‘Now they are awakened by the noises of war and the sickening reality of terror. They wake up to mortal fear.’ 

Reflecting, on Mary waking up when Jesus was crucified, he said she awoke ‘grim’ with ‘anger’ at disciples for running away and her ‘misery’ at the future.

He added: ‘Such a sense of helplessness will have been common this morning. 

‘Many will be awakened in refugee camps separated from loved ones on the front line, grieving for those missing, raped, abused or killed wondering how to cope.  

‘For many in this country, the news from Ukraine is terrible but the rising cost of power and fuel, of basic foods, will be the first and overwhelming thought of the day.

‘For others it will be the continued deep sense of loss of someone from Covid, or during Covid, to whom they could not say a proper farewell.

‘The news might move on but grief does not. 

‘Others will be struggling at work or feel a deep sense of injustice at the way they’ve been mistreated by friends, families or employers.’ 

Reflecting on what the resurrection means for us as individuals, the Archbishop will say: ‘In dying for us, [God] sees and knows the wounds that cause us so much pain.

‘He hears the cry of the mothers in Ukraine, he sees the fear of boys too young to become soldiers, [and] he knows the vulnerability of the orphans and refugees.

‘Closer to home, he sees the humiliation of the grandparent visiting the food bank for the first time, the desperate choice of parents in poverty and the grief and weariness of the pandemic.’

On Saturday, a peer suggested that the Government’s plan may breach the Geneva conventions, a peer has suggested. 

Former child refugee and Labour peer Alf Dubs said ministers would face opposition in the Lords over the plan unveiled by Home Secretary Priti Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week.

In an interview with The Guardian, Lord Dubs said the Government was attempting to ‘ride roughshod’ over international agreements.

He said: ‘I think it’s a way of getting rid of people the Government doesn’t want, dumping them in a distant African country, and they’ll have no chance of getting out of there again.

‘I think it’s a breach of the 1951 Geneva conventions on refugees. You can’t just shunt them around like unwanted people.’

It comes as it was reported that Ms Patel took the rare step of issuing a ministerial direction to overrule concerns of civil servants about whether the concept will deliver value for money.

As part of the plan designed to curb migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, those who are deemed to have entered Britain by unlawful means since January 1 may be sent to Rwanda where they will be permitted to apply for asylum in the African country.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the claimed use of the ministerial direction by the Home Secretary was only the second deployment of the power within the Home Office in the past 30 years.

The Home Office declined to comment on the matter when approached by the PA news agency.

Speaking to Times Radio on Saturday, shadow prisons minister Ellie Reeves said: ‘The UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) has come out really, really strongly condemning the Government’s proposals, as have many organisations, and it seems the Government’s own civil servants have expressed huge misgivings about the plans, which seem to be completely misguided.’

The Labour politician said: ‘The Government is going to be paying £120 million upfront before any asylum seekers will be sent to Rwanda.

‘Asylum seekers are saying it won’t deter them from crossing the Channel.

‘We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis so it doesn’t seem the right way to be spending money on an unethical and unworkable scheme that won’t deter people from coming over.’

She later added: ‘The whole system needs looking at again, so rather than making sweeping statements – these announcements that are completely unworkable and incredibly expensive – what the Government actually needs to do is get to grips with the system and put in place a system that actually works, increase prosecutions and clamp down on criminal gangs.’

But Ms Patel said Denmark could be among those to reproduce the UK Government’s ‘blueprint’.

‘There is no question now that the model we have put forward, I’m convinced is world class and a world first, and it will be used as a blueprint going forward, there’s no doubt about that,’ Ms Patel said.

‘I would not be surprised if other countries start coming to us direct on the back of this as well.’

The Home Secretary said Copenhagen was in talks with Rwanda as well, adding the Council of Europe ‘have also basically said they are interested in working with us’.

The Home Office denied its approach was in breach of refugee agreements.

But Lord Dubs, who came to the UK from then Czechoslovakia on one of the Kindertransport trains in 1939, told The Guardian there would be legal challenges and opposition by peers.

‘If (Ms Patel) says she’ll get rid of the lefty lawyers’ claims, well, I think she may have another thing coming. My understanding is that they’re going to have real difficulties in getting this through anyway,’ he said.

On Friday, the United Nations also criticised the proposal as an ‘egregious breach of international law’. Gillian Triggs, a UNHCR assistant secretary-general, said the agency ‘strongly condemns outsourcing the primary responsibility to consider the refugee status.’ 

Put to her that Australia had effectively deployed a similar tactic to cut migration numbers, Ms Triggs said: ‘My point is, just as the Australian policy is an egregious breach of international law and refugee law and human rights law, so too is this proposal by the United Kingdom Government.

‘It is very unusual, very few states have tried this, and the purpose is primarily deterrent – and it can be effective, I don’t think we’re denying that.

‘But what we’re saying at the UN refugee agency is that there are much more legally effective ways of achieving the same outcome.’

She said attempting to ‘shift responsibility’ for asylum seekers arriving in Britain was ‘really unacceptable’.

Ms Triggs pointed out that Israel had attempted to send Eritrean and Sudanese refugees to Rwanda, but that they ‘simply left the country and started the process all over again’.

‘In other words, it is not actually a long-term deterrent,’ she added.

In response to the UNHCR, the Home Office insisted to the MailOnline that ‘Rwanda is a fundamentally safe and secure country with a track record of supporting asylum seekers.’ It noted that the UNHCR has previously sad the country is safe for refugees.

‘Under this agreement, Rwanda will process claims in accordance with the UN Refugee Convention, national and international human rights laws, and will ensure their protection from inhuman and degrading treatment or being returned to the place they originally fled,’ the Home Office’s statement said. 

‘There is nothing in the UN Refugee Convention which prevents removal to a safe country,’ it added.

More migrants arrive in UK on Easter Sunday despite risk they face being deported to Rwanda as Priti Patel slams ‘synthetic outrage’ at plan

• Ms Patel announced plans to deport failed asylum seekers to Rwands this week
• But a boat with around 20 migrants aboard was brought into Dover, Kent, today
• Men, women and young children were brought ashore wearing life jackets 
• It comes a day after a further 252 migrants attempting to make the journey
• Home Secretary slammed ‘synthetic hysteria’ amid criticism of the new plans

By Jamie Philips

More migrants have arrived in the UK today, despite the risk of being deported to Rwanda – as Priti Patel slams ‘synthetic outrage’ at the plans.

The Government announced this week it plans to provide failed asylum seekers, including those crossing the Channel in small boats, with a one-way ticket to the African country, where they will have the right to apply to live permanently. 

But a boat with around 20 migrants on board was brought ashore into Dover, Kent, on Easter Sunday after being intercepted by Border Force officers.   

Men, women and young children were all wearing lifejackets as they were brought into the port this morning to be processed. 

Windy conditions in the Channel are expected to prevent large numbers attempting the treacherous crossing today. 

It comes a day after the Royal Navy and Border Force intercepted a further 252 migrants attempting to make the treacherous journey.

Despite choppy conditions in the 21-mile wide Dover Straits, seven flimsy dinghies made the dangerous voyage and were rescued in British waters.

As of Saturday, the latest figures now mean 6,263 migrants have already been detained so far this year in 193 small boats.

In 2021 that figure was not reached until July 10, while 1,713 people have been arrived this month alone.

Home Secretary Priti Patel yesterday slammed the ‘synthetic outrage’ over the Rwanda plans.

She also accused political opponents of treating exploited migrants with contempt and slammed ‘shameful’ human rights lawyers for profiting from traffickers sending groups to the UK in flimsy dinghies, The Sun reports. 

Ms Patel said:  ‘All I’ve heard the last couple of days is a typical hysterical reaction from the Left, particularly through their social media echo chamber.

‘All they have to offer is synthetic outrage. Labour doesn’t have a plan. They don’t care about Britain’s interests or UK taxpayers who foot the bill.

‘They are showing complete contempt for democracy and the wishes of the British ­people who have been crying out for years for action to fix our broken asylum system and tackle illegal migration.’

A Government source told the Mail on Sunday that after striking a dramatic deal, the Home Secretary wants to spread the word internationally and let ‘people know the rules have changed and if you arrive illegally to the UK, you can be deported to Rwanda’.  

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also warned that ‘anyone entering the UK illegally, as well as those who have arrived illegally since 1 January, may now be relocated to Rwanda’.

A £100,000 information campaign will use social media to reach people in ‘source countries’ in their own languages. 

Jacob Rees-Mogg also suggested today that migrants crossing the Channel in small boats are ‘supporting organised crime’.

The Cabinet minister, speaking on Radio 4’s The World This Weekend programme, said he disagrees with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s interpretation of the Government’s new immigration policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

In his Easter sermon, Justin Welby earlier said ‘sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God’.

Reacting to the sermon, Mr Rees-Mogg said: ‘I think he misunderstands what the policy is trying to achieve, and that it isn’t an abandonment of responsibility, it is in fact a taking on of a very difficult responsibility.

‘The problem that is being dealt with is that people are risking their lives in the hands of people traffickers, to get into this country illegally. Now, it’s not the illegal bit of it, it is the encouragement of people traffickers that needs to be stopped.’

He added that ’90 per cent of people coming are young men who by coming via people traffickers are jumping the queue for others’.

Mr Rees-Mogg continued: ‘They are in doing so not only risking their lives but supporting organised crime. What we need to do is focus on legal routes into this country of which there are quite a number.’ 

The new deal – expected to be the subject of legal challenges – was presented to Cabinet Ministers on Wednesday by Ms Patel and the Prime Minister.

The Rwandan government will receive £120 million in investment from the UK with the cost of housing each migrant for three months estimated at £20,000 to £30,000.

Ms Patel issued a ministerial direction, only the second in the department for 30 years, to force through the policy after objections from Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft. 

Senior Home Office civil servants have expressed dismay at the cost. One said: ‘It will be astronomical. The legal bill alone will be huge.’

Last night, the Home Office published an exchange of letters between Ms Patel and Mr Rycroft in which he called for a ministerial direction as he could not justify the policy’s value for money.

The package also includes a new immigration centre for 500 men at a former RAF base in Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire.

Speaking after Saturday’s crossings, Minister for Justice and Tackling Illegal Migration Tom Pursglove MP said: ‘The rise in dangerous Channel crossings is unacceptable.

‘Not only are they an overt abuse of our immigration laws but they also impact on the UK taxpayer, risk lives and our ability to help refugees come to the UK via safe and legal routes. Rightly, the British public has had enough.

‘Through our Nationality and Borders Bill, we’re cracking down on people smugglers and fixing the broken system by making it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and introducing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for those who facilitate illegal entry into our country.’ 

Source: Daily Mail