Dowden on UK migration plan

Meanwhile, the UK's new Deputy Prime Minister on Sunday suggested the country's Home Secretary would be given discretionary powers to overrule verdicts from European courts on the deportation of migrants.Britain’s Conservative government wants to stop migrants from reaching the U.K. on risky journeys across the English Channel, and a deportation agreement signed with Rwanda last year was part of measures intended to deter the arrivals.

More than 45,000 people arrived in Britain by boat in 2022, compared with 8,500 in 2020.Under the plans, some migrants who arrive in the U.K. in small boats would be flown to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed.

Those granted asylum would stay in the African country rather than return to Britain.But the 140-million-pound plan has been mired in legal challenges, and no one has yet been sent to Rwanda.The U.K. was forced to cancel the first deportation flight at the last minute in June after the European Court of Human Rights ruled the plan carried “a real risk of irreversible harm.”