Yahoo News Rwanda policy ruling: How confident are you Sunak can 'stop the boats'?
The prime minister has made resolving the asylum situation in the UK one of his five key priorities.
Rishi Sunak has vowed to plough on with the government’s Rwanda policy, despite the Supreme Court ruling it unlawful.
One of the prime minister’s five key pledges – to ‘stop the boats’ – was dealt a significant blow on Wednesday by the ruling, which rejected the government’s appeal over its policy of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda if they arrive by unauthorised means.
But Sunak attempted to show he would get round the ruling by saying he would end the “merry-go-round” of legal challenges with emergency legislation to deem the east African nation a safe country.
The PM is also facing pressure from the Tory right, who are pushing for tougher measures to deal with illegal asylum seekers.
They have also urged Sunak to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – something the PM has resisted.
However, speaking in Downing Street on Wednesday, Sunak vowed: “I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights.”
Recommended reading
Government's ‘unlawful’ Rwanda policy ruling explained (Evening Standard)
Ministers ‘determined’ to get Rwanda removal flight off before the election (PA Media)
Home secretary forced to deny labelling Rwanda plan 'bats**t' (The National)
What Britons think about the ruling
Polling taken by YouGov after the Supreme Court decision found that a majority of those asked (39%) want the policy scrapped entirely.
Out of this, 16% were people who voted Conservative in the 2019 general election.
Nearly a third (29%) said the government should find another third country, while 14% said the government should do something else to tackle illegal immigration.
A separate poll found over half of people (51%) saying the government should stay in the ECHR, while over a quarter (28%) said that the UK should withdraw.
Just over a fifth (21%) said they were not sure.
Sunak has made a big deal of tackling the immigration issue but Britons overwhelmingly believe the government is handling it badly.
In separate polling by YouGov in August, eight in ten people said they were not very confident (34%) or not at all confident (46%) that the government will be successful, while just 9% had confidence Sunak will reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the channel on small boats.
With such low confidence in the government’s handling of immigration, the prime minister will be hoping that what he does now will change his fortunes.
Tell us what you think in our poll below…
What is the scale of the problem?
According to official Home Office statistics - represented in the charts from data platform Statista - there has been a huge increase in the number of people having asylum granted in the UK since the Tories came into power in 2010.
At that point there were just over 5,000 asylum applications granted – but that figure stands at nearly 15,000 in 2023.
The chart shows that there was a sharp increase from 2020 – coming at the same time as asylum refusals continued a drop that started in 2018.
Asylum refusals stand at just over 5,000 in 2023, compared to around 15,000 in 2010.
It shows that the figures for asylum grants and refusals have more or less directly swapped round over the past 13 years.
The number of asylum applications made in the UK in the same period also show a large increase, from 17,916 in 2010 to 75,492 in 2023.
Once again, the figures saw a sharp increase from 2020 onwards, at the same time as there were record numbers of boat crossings to the UK.
One of the major criticisms of the government in recent years has been the increasing backlog in asylum applications - which has led to growing numbers of applicants being housed in hotels at taxpayer expense.
In May, it emerged the backlog had hit a new record high with more than three-quarters of claims made by people who crossed the Channel since 2018 still awaiting a decision.
Separate data from the Home Office found that the overall backlog of applications awaiting a decision now stands at 122,585 – down 10% from 136,779 on 30 July and down 12% from a record 138,782 at the end of February.
In terms of nationalities, Albanians overwhelmingly make up the majority of asylum applications in the UK in 2022/23, with 13,714 claims made.
Following the fallout of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, asylum applications from there stand at 9,606, while applications from Iranian citizens stands at 7,719.
Watch: Sunak promises emergency legislation to prevent Rwanda ‘merry-go-round’
