Priti Patel criticises archbishops for ‘failing to offer solutions’ over Rwanda plan
The Home Secretary hit out amid a growing backlash to the scheme.
Priti Patel has challenged critics of her plan to send migrants to Rwanda to come up with a better solution.
The Home Secretary hit out after religious leaders voiced their concerns in a growing row about the controversial idea, which has sparked a huge backlash from campaigners and experts.
Writing a joint article in The Times with Rwandan foreign minister Vincent Biruta, Ms Patel claimed that the scheme was ‘bold and innovative’, and would help stop small boats crossing The Channel.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested flying asylum seekers more than 4,000 miles to East Africa was ‘sub-contracting our responsibilities’ and against ‘the nature of God’.
But he suggested that ‘the details’ of what to do with asylum seekers was for politicians to decide.
His counterpart in York also used his Easter sermon to deride the idea as ‘so depressing and distressing’.
But in the joint article, Ms Patel and Mr Biruta said: ‘We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans fail to offer their own solutions.’
On Sunday, Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg had suggested that the Archbishop of Canterbury had misunderstood the aims of the policy.
Mr Welby said there are ‘serious ethical questions about sending asylum seekers overseas’.
The Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, added: ‘We can do better than this.’
He said: ‘After all, there is in law no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker.
‘It is the people who exploit them that we need to crack down on, not our sisters and brothers in their need. We don’t need to build more barriers and cower in the darkness of the shadows they create.’
But speaking on Radio 4’s The World This Weekend programme, Mr Rees-Mogg argued that the policy was about dealing with the problem of boats crossing the Channel.
Hundreds crossed the Channel this weekend alone.
Accusing migrants of ‘supporting organised crime’, Mr Rees-Mogg went on: ‘The problem that is being dealt with is that people are risking their lives in the hands of people traffickers, to get into this country illegally. Now, it’s not the illegal bit of it, it is the encouragement of people traffickers that needs to be stopped.;
He suggested ‘90% of people coming are young men who by coming via people traffickers are jumping the queue for others’.
Other Tory MPs took to Twitter to say religious leaders should stay out of politics, suggesting the two archbishops had overstepped the mark.
However Tory MP for Sutton Coldfield and former minister Andrew Mitchell said although he had ‘enormous sympathy’ with the Government, the policy was unlikely to achieve its aims.
He said: ‘What I’m worried about with the Rwanda policy is it won’t achieve what they are after, it’s also likely to be horrendously expensive, and we have to have a great care at this time for taxpayers’ money.’
Ms Patel said she expects other countries to follow the UK’s example, suggesting Denmark could be among those to reproduce the Government’s ‘blueprint’, while the Home Office insisted its approach is not in breach of refugee agreements.
The UN has said the policy breaks international law.
Experts have also hit out at the move, saying it is expensive, ‘shamefully cruel’ and environmentally damaging.
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The former Home Office Permanent Secretary Sir David Normington added: ‘It’s inhumane, it’s morally reprehensible, it’s probably unlawful and it may well be unworkable’, in an interview with BBC Panorama.
But this morning a Government minister echoed Ms Patel’s sentiments, and rejected the Archbishops’ criticisms.
Energy Minister Greg Hands told Sky News: ‘No, we’re not (outsourcing our responsibilities). This is an agreement between two sovereign countries, the UK and Rwanda.
‘I think what others, the critics of this plan, need to do is to show what their solution would be.’
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