Ministers are using an “outdated and flawed” Home Office analysis to persuade Tory MPs to vote for Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill, informed party sources have said.
Modelling distributed to MPs claims that 99.5% of individual legal challenges submitted by asylum seekers will fail to block their deportation to Rwanda.
The document, entitled “High Level Process for the new Bill” and first disclosed in the Times, is being circulated by whips before the first vote on the bill in the Commons, due on Tuesday.
Conservative sources say the modelling is based on data from March, and does not take into account subsequent rulings by the appeal court and supreme court that have lowered the threshold of asylum claims.
A Tory source said: “This is an outdated and analytically flawed model from March which came before defeats in the court of appeal and supreme court. Number 10 don’t realise the world has changed and that’s their fundamental problem. There was never any modelling done for the new Rwanda bill because they failed to plan. Even this old, optimistic model says it could take more than two months to remove a migrant. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.”
The disclosure comes after it emerged that the Home Office had earmarked at least £700m to manage the arrival of refugees and migrants on small boats until 2030, with the option of extending the contracts until 2034.
The money will be spent running the Western Jet Foil facility in Dover and the reception centre at the former Manston airfield in Kent, documents discovered by the BBC said.
The modelling being sent to MPs claims that nine out of 10 individual legal challenges against Sunak’s emergency bill would be rejected with no right of appeal within 10 days of the claimant’s arrival in the UK.
This is because they would have to provide evidence that they would face “serious and irreversible harm” if removed to Rwanda, Home Office officials claimed. They would then be removed to Rwanda seven days later having spent less than three weeks in the UK, the document continues.
MPs on the right of the Conservative party will decide whether to vote for the bill after they hear a detailed assessment from a “star chamber” of legal experts at midday. Most are expected to vote for the bill or to abstain despite objecting to it because they hope to amend it at a later stage.
Several MPs in the One Nation centre-right grouping have told whips they intend to vote against the bill on Tuesday, sources said.
A report from the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange claims thatthe bill as it stands does not adequately anticipate and address the risk of other types of litigation, which may challenge the premises of the bill and/or frustrate its implementation in practice. Policy Exchange suggests ways that the bill can and should be amended to address the relevant risks.
