Migrants ‘in limbo’ may get amnesty instead of being sent to Rwanda

Migrants from a cohort of 40,000 people who are stuck “in limbo” may have to be granted amnesty rather than being sent to Rwanda, a senior Tory MP has warned.

Tim Loughton, a former minister who is a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said the backlog of 40,000 migrants who had entered the UK illegally since the Illegal Migration Act got Royal Assent was too big for them all to be sent to Rwanda.

The 40,000 have arrived since March 7 last year, when the provisions of the Act barring them from claiming asylum took effect.

However, the power in the Act enabling the Home Secretary to detain and deport them to Rwanda has yet to be activated, leaving migrants in limbo without the ability to claim asylum or leave the UK.

Civil servants admitted migrants were in limbo when questioned by Mr Loughton at a hearing of the public accounts committee on Monday, describing their status as “pending relocation”.

“At some stage, the duty to remove will become active, at which point what happens when you cannot remove them because there are not enough places on the planes?” said Mr Loughton.

“It is difficult to know what they are going to do with them given those circumstances, other than to issue some sort of amnesty, which obviously would not go down at all well.”

Ministers and officials have refused to say how many migrants will be deported to Rwanda, but have insisted the scheme is uncapped.

Leaked Home Office documents at the weekend suggested that the UK and Rwanda had initially agreed on around 30,000 people being deported over the five years of the migration partnership between the two countries.

Other documents have indicated that limits on detention capacity for migrants and the requirements of the legal appeals would mean that around 700 people a month could be processed for deportation.

Speaking at the public accounts committee on Monday, Sir Matthew Rycroft, the top civil servant at the Home Office, denied that the Government had any plans to grant migrants an amnesty, saying it planned to operationalise the Safety of Rwanda Bill as soon as it gained Royal Assent.

The Bill is due to return to the Lords on Tuesday, when it is expected that Labour and crossbench peers will attempt to reinstate amendments defeated by the Commons on Monday.

The Act, combined with a new treaty with Rwanda, aims to get deportation flights off the ground by the spring by declaring the central African state safe and limiting legal challenges after the Supreme Court declared the scheme unlawful and Rwanda unsafe.

Dan Hobbs, the director general for migration and borders at the Home Office, told MPs the migrants would be processed for deportation to Rwanda once the provisions in the Illegal Migration Act were activated.