A LANDMARK ruling in Belfast which has blocked the Rwanda scheme from applying has sparked accusations that the UK Government has set up a separate immigration system for Northern Ireland.
A ruling at Belfast’s High Court on Monday disapplied parts of the Rwanda scheme legislation on the grounds it conflicted with the Windsor Framework, which was set up to resolve post-Brexit border issues in Ireland.
The judge made his ruling on the basis that the Windsor Framework requires that there can be no reduction in the extent of people’s human rights in Northern Ireland as defined by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
It delivered a major blow to the Government and the Home Office was on Tuesday told it had been warned the Illegal Migration Act would not work in Northern Ireland.
Shadow Home Office minister Stephen Kinnock said: “It truly beggars belief that just a matter of weeks after the Prime Minister negotiated the Windsor Framework in February of last year, he promptly brought forward a piece of immigration legislation which appears to have left Northern Ireland with immigration rules that are different to the rest of the UK.”
Immigration Minister Tom Pursglove replied: “We are committed to upholding our legal obligations but the Safety of Rwanda Act does not engage the Good Friday Agreement including the rights chapter.
“Those rights seek to address long-standing and specific issues relating to Northern Ireland’s past and do not extend to matters engaged by the Act.”
Implications for the Union?
SNP home affairs spokesperson Alison Thewliss (below) said: “All of this was entirely predictable, the implications for the Good Friday Agreement were warned about through the course of the Illegal Migration Act […] so can he say why his Government failed to heed the warnings, the expert advice?
“Why did they ignore the status of Northern Ireland and what now for the applicability of the Rwanda act in Northern Ireland?”
READ MORE: Parts of Rwanda scheme law blocked by Northern Irish court
She said she was “disturbed” that Scots were “not afforded the same rights even as those in Northern Ireland.”
Thewliss added: “So what does he regard as the implications for this for the future of the Union?”
Pursglove replied: “I’m not going to give a running commentary around what is ongoing litigation but we are determined to appeal this judgment, we are currently taking legal advice around it and I can also just be very clear, as I’ve said previously, that this judgment changes nothing about our operational plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda this July or the lawfulness of our Safety of Rwanda Act.
“When it comes to the concerns that I know have been expressed about migrants flocking to Northern Ireland to avoid deportation to Rwanda, there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever of doing so.
“We’re operationalising this policy on a [Nationality and Borders Act] basis.”
EU law 'given primacy over UK law'
Former home secretary Suella Braverman (below) said the Belfast court’s decision meant that the Windsor Framework had given EU law primacy over British law in Northern Ireland.
Braverman said: “I believed the assurances made to me at the time, but isn’t it now patently clear that the Windsor Framework has operated in a way to undermine our sovereignty, to undermine Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, and I’m afraid has fundamentally failed upon its first contact with reality.”
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Pursglove insisted that there should be “consistent application across the UK” of immigration policy and argued that the Windsor Framework should not be “read so creatively” as to cover migration issues.
He told the Commons: “We’ve consistently made clear that the rights commitments in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement should be interpreted as they were always intended and not expanded to cover reserved issues like illegal migration.
“We are also equally clear that immigration is a reserved matter, which has always been applied uniformly across the UK. We do not accept that the Good Friday Agreement should be read so creatively as to extend to matters such as tackling illegal migration, which is a UK-wide issue and not in any way related to the original intention of the Good Friday Agreement.”
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