The earliest possible date for flights to Rwanda is the 24th June, government lawyers have told the High Court.
It comes as Labour leader Keir Starmer said he will scrap the Rwanda deportation plan “straight away” if he wins power, and vowed an end to the “unquenchable Tory desire for shortcuts”.
The Labour leader attacked Rishi Sunak’s approach to the small boats crisis as “gimmicks, not serious government” and set out the party’s own plans to crack down on people smugglers.
The schedule for deportation flights has been revealed in documents relating to the civil service union’s legal challenge against the government. Government lawyers had previously told the court that the earliest that an asylum seeker would be deported to Rwanda was from 1st to the 15th July.
They have now updated this, saying that flights will start the week commencing 24th June. They told the judge: “We are instructed that this is the earliest possible date for the first removals and that the decision on the precise date will be based on operational considerations and progress over the coming weeks.”
The civil service union, the FDA, has launched a legal challenge against the government’s plan to detain asylum seekers and fly them to Rwanda.
The union is worried about what would happen if civil servants were told by ministers to break international law when carrying out the deportations.
Their case against the government is scheduled to be heard in the High Court in the first week of June, but government lawyers have tried to move the hearing earlier in an apparent bid to make sure flights get off the ground.
Mr Justice Chamberlain, the judge in the case, refused to change the timetable to suit the government. He said that the government lawyer’s update on the dates of the flights was not a “clarification” but in fact “a change of position”.
Rishi Sunak has previously pledged to get flights to Rwanda in the air by July “no ifs, no buts”.
Sir Keir said on Friday that he expected the government to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda this summer, saying: “They will get flights off the ground – I don’t doubt that.”
He added that Mr Sunak is likely to get “a couple of hundred” migrants to Rwanda before the election “for party management”.
But, asked by The Independent what would happen to those deported to Rwanda in the coming months once Labour scrapped the plan, he said Labour was “not interested in repatriating people”.
The Home Office has also agreed to amend parts of the published Safety of Rwanda policy after charity Asylum Aid pointed out inconsistencies between the policy and the Act.
The government confirmed that case workers need to consider whether an individual asylum seeker would be personally safe in Rwanda if they try and challenge their removal.
The Home Office however disagreed with Asylum Aid’s second challenge to the policy, which argued that an individual could rely on grounds that Rwanda might send them to another country. This clash sets up another legal challenge against Mr Sunak’s deportation plan, which will be brought by the charity.
Sir Keir unveiled a counter-terror style small boats plan on Friday that he said would “replace gimmicks with graft”. He pledged to scrap the Rwanda scheme and to partly fund a new border unit to stop small boats crossing the Channel.
Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: “Everyone has lost track of how many times Rishi Sunak has given a date for these pointless flights.”
“The country gave up on this policy long ago and nobody will be cheering millions of pounds being spent on these flights.”