0:00

Trust in politics is broken, so can we

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get UK politics working again? That was the

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last time we were happy. 2012. I'm

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Beth Rigby, Sky's political editor.

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0:30

Hi, this is the Sky News Daily. I'm Matt

0:33

Barbette. The ayes to the right, 320. The

0:36

nos to the left, 276. After

0:43

months and months, it has finally happened. The

0:46

Rwanda bill has been passed. It's taken a

0:48

long time to get to this point, but

0:50

now at least a few people may be

0:52

sent to the African country and

0:55

fairly quickly. The bill could be

0:57

made into law by the end of the week,

0:59

and the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says he's optimistic

1:01

that the first plane carrying asylum seekers will take

1:03

off in the next 10 to 12 weeks. So

1:07

what about the other realities of

1:09

this polarising situation? Well,

1:11

just today, five more people have died

1:13

after apparently trying to cross the channel

1:15

in a small boat. They were departing

1:17

the European Union, where several countries like

1:19

the UK are also hardening

1:21

their stance on migration. So

1:24

today we'll be exploring these themes and hearing

1:26

the response from people claiming asylum in the

1:28

UK, as well as the view

1:30

from the continent and the bigger global picture

1:33

on the movement of people around the world.

1:37

So I'm in Beloine at the moment,

1:39

been a busy and in some ways,

1:42

not a pretty grim day

1:44

so far. I started the day

1:46

just off Dunkirk, reporting on,

1:48

of course, the aftermath of the Rwanda bill

1:50

going through Parliament, and we saw a number

1:52

of migrant boats trying to come out to

1:54

sea, a couple of them turned back, another

1:56

one persevered on its way to Britain. Adam

1:58

Parsons is our euro. correspondent and he

2:01

spent the day out on the beaches

2:03

of northern France where news of the

2:05

Rwanda bill doesn't seem to have dissuaded

2:07

people from attempting to cross the Channel.

2:10

Then we got this news of this awful

2:12

tragedy that happened off a place called Wimmeholz

2:14

so we went down to there, spoke

2:17

to people who'd seen that boat,

2:19

had witnessed the dead people being

2:21

brought back to shore,

2:23

had seen a harrowing sight

2:25

of a small child dying.

2:28

This is a grim day, I've

2:30

unfortunately had experience of much worse

2:32

days than this. It's always a

2:34

quite a bitter and experienced reporting

2:36

on these Channel crossings, the sound,

2:38

the smells, the experiences, the stories

2:40

that people tell you, but

2:43

this number of deaths is never

2:46

not grim. But

2:48

Adam this year so far it's been

2:50

a very high number of people both

2:53

attempting to cross and getting across as

2:55

well. It seems as

2:57

if we now have more people who've died trying

2:59

to cross the Channel in 2024 and

3:01

what are we not even yet

3:03

at the end of April than died

3:06

in the entirety of 2023. But the numbers

3:08

are up but

3:11

of course this all happens

3:13

against a very significant political

3:15

backdrop. The endless negotiations that

3:18

have happened in the in the British

3:20

Parliament and indeed within the British Conservative

3:22

Party about how to stop

3:25

the boats. It's a very

3:27

turbulent, complicated, very big P political

3:29

backdrop to this and I think at the other end of

3:31

the scope you have this very human

3:34

tragedy coming out of it. It's

3:36

hard for people in the UK to not

3:38

be aware of this Rwanda bill, perhaps not

3:40

be aware today that it

3:43

has got over its biggest hurdle in terms

3:45

of becoming law. What

3:47

awareness is there amongst the people you're talking to,

3:49

the people who want to get in those small

3:51

boats of the Rwanda bill?

3:54

A growing level of awareness I

3:57

would say when... What is it?

3:59

A couple of years? ago that this

4:01

was last suggested. It took quite a long

4:03

time for it to percolate into the minds

4:05

of people that A, this

4:08

was being talked about and B, should it be

4:10

considered as a deterrent. I

4:12

think a lot of people to whom I

4:14

talk now in the camps or beaches here

4:16

in the north front are aware of it.

4:19

I've yet to come across anyone who

4:21

says, well, I'm going to change my mind. That's for

4:23

a few reasons. Number one is if you get here

4:25

to these beaches to these

4:27

camps, you're already invested. You're already clearly

4:29

going to try to get to the

4:31

UK. There's no reason you would come

4:33

to Wimmera, Besshoy, Calais, Dunkirk, except to

4:36

try to get across the channel. I

4:38

think number two, people have

4:40

said to me they don't believe it. They sort

4:42

of think it might be propaganda. There might be

4:44

something they, even though we now know it's gone

4:46

to law that people are still not convinced it's

4:48

true. Number three, they think it's morally, if they

4:51

are informed about it, people have said to me,

4:53

morally, you can't send me to Africa. I want

4:56

asylum. I want safety on a new life in

4:58

the United Kingdom. So I think,

5:01

to be honest, as a deterrent, the

5:04

mere concept of the Rwanda law

5:07

is not going to be enough. I'm

5:09

pretty sure I've never met anyone who says,

5:11

well, I'm giving up. I'm not coming to

5:13

Britain. The Rwanda legislation has put me off

5:16

entirely. I'm yet to meet that person. And

5:18

one other thing I'd say about it is people

5:20

smugglers are extraordinarily tenacious.

5:24

There is a plan and

5:26

it's been into effect to send a

5:29

significant number of migrants to Rwanda.

5:32

I suspect people smugglers may decide to

5:34

try and get migrants

5:36

into the country. I wonder more

5:39

about the work that's done. At the moment, it's

5:41

pretty upfront. If

5:44

the point is I want

5:46

to go to Britain, that I want

5:48

to avoid official detection, that would

5:50

take us into a whole new realm of

5:53

this battle between the authorities and people smugglers.

5:57

So that's the situation that Sky News is

5:59

experiencing. on the other side of

6:01

the channel. But what about here? Our community's

6:04

correspondent is Becky Johnson, and she's been talking

6:06

to people in Derby who came to the

6:08

UK seeking asylum to find out what they

6:11

think about the recent developments. There

6:14

was a few dozen migrants there.

6:16

Most of them quite recently arrived

6:19

asylum seekers, and it's fair to

6:21

say the primary topic of discussion

6:23

was Rwanda. There were some people

6:25

there who'd had letters from

6:28

the home office, one directly mentioned that

6:30

Rwanda was being considered as an option

6:32

for him. Others have been referred

6:34

to the home office's third country unit, which

6:36

means their claims aren't being processed. That means

6:38

they're also at risk of going to Rwanda.

6:41

And yeah, it was

6:43

really interesting to speak to them because

6:46

I speak a lot to asylum seekers

6:48

and have done in recent months. And

6:50

I would generally say that most,

6:54

well, almost all asylum seekers that I've spoken to

6:56

in recent months say they're not

6:58

worried about Rwanda, they don't think it will

7:00

happen. But in that room in Derby where

7:03

there were people holding these letters, there was

7:05

real concern about Rwanda, there was real fear

7:07

about it, people saying they were losing sleep

7:09

about it. And indeed one man

7:12

said that he would urge

7:14

other asylum seekers to not travel to

7:16

the UK. So it felt like for

7:18

the first time I was meeting people

7:21

for whom this policy felt like it was

7:23

real and it could happen to them. And

7:26

that begs the next question, clearly not a deterrent

7:28

for them, they are already in the UK, but

7:32

it is filtering back to other people, is

7:34

it? And that could be the deterrent effect

7:36

there. Well, I mean, we've seen

7:38

obviously tragic events on the channel, we

7:40

know people are still coming across. Certainly

7:44

the people I spoke to, at

7:46

least a few said that had

7:48

they known that they would be

7:50

earmarked as potentially people that

7:52

would be heading to Rwanda, they wouldn't have

7:54

come to the UK, they wouldn't have made

7:56

that dangerous journey. Whenever you speak to asylum

7:58

seekers that have crossed. channel in small boats

8:00

and pretty much everyone in that room had. The

8:03

date that they made that crossing

8:05

is emblazoned on their memory.

8:08

It's a really dangerous journey to

8:10

make and they do so expecting

8:12

to make a life here in the UK and

8:15

they did that knowing that Rwanda

8:17

was being considered but now

8:19

that it's a reality they wish they

8:21

hadn't. And so it's impossible really to

8:23

say whether it will

8:25

deter people who haven't yet made the

8:27

journey. The sense I get actually is

8:31

that for the moment these men are

8:33

quite fearful that they will be sent to

8:36

Rwanda. And there's a sense that there are

8:38

still thousands of people who are here in

8:40

the UK via whatever means who

8:42

are living in limbo. They're not being

8:45

processed necessarily here. They may never be

8:47

processed here. They may never know if

8:49

they're going to go to Rwanda or not. Was

8:51

that the sort of prevailing feeling that they're just

8:54

stuck in the middle? Yeah, so

8:56

a lot of them simply have

8:58

had nothing happen

9:01

with their asylum claim since they arrived in

9:03

the UK. Now the government passed the illegal

9:05

migration bill last summer. That means that since

9:08

anybody that arrived after mid July and there

9:10

were some people in that position that I

9:13

met cannot

9:16

claim asylum in the UK. Their

9:18

claim is deemed inadmissible. In effect

9:20

they can only be processed outside

9:23

of the UK. The most

9:25

recent stats came out yesterday on the numbers of

9:27

people in that position. It's now around 52,000. That's

9:29

a lot of people who have had nothing done

9:31

about their

9:37

status since July last year.

9:40

Now is it realistic to think that they

9:42

will all be sent to Rwanda? And

9:45

if not, what happens to them? Because

9:49

currently they are illegal

9:51

immigrants here indefinitely.

9:54

There's another point of view

9:56

that many people listening may

9:58

well have in the If

10:01

they're seeking asylum from somewhere, that place

10:03

is unsafe. It is dangerous. Did

10:06

any of them that you spoke to

10:08

understand the idea that Rwanda may just

10:10

be a safer place than where they

10:13

were seeking asylum from? A lot

10:15

of these people, they have families, wives

10:17

and children back home. And

10:20

yet none of them are contemplating

10:22

going back home. So

10:24

I spoke to people from

10:26

Iran, from Afghanistan, from

10:28

Sudan. None of them are contemplating

10:30

just getting on a

10:32

plane and going back home. And I think that

10:34

tells you that

10:36

they are fleeing from something.

10:38

There was a 34-year-old man Massoud

10:41

from Iran, and

10:44

actually another Iranian man I met. Both

10:46

have wives and children back in Iran,

10:49

both of whom were hoping they would come to

10:51

the UK, claim asylum, and then their families

10:53

would follow. Now one man, Hamza,

10:55

said to me that his wife back in

10:57

Iran has already said to him, if he

11:00

gets sent to Rwanda, he's never going to

11:02

see her and their child again, because

11:05

they have no plans to

11:07

travel to Rwanda, whereas they would have come to

11:09

the UK. So that's the

11:11

situation that people are in. Now, given

11:15

that that's the situation and he still doesn't want to

11:17

go back to Iran because he says that he's in

11:19

danger there, perhaps that makes that claim

11:22

of his more credible, you know, that he

11:25

realizes that if he gets sent to Rwanda, that

11:27

is his only option other than staying here. And

11:30

he's not considering going back. That's

11:34

what people will be asking now the

11:36

bill is passed. Will it actually achieve

11:38

what the government hopes and put people

11:40

off making that perilous journey across the

11:42

channel? In a minute we'll ask

11:44

the Migration Observatory's Dr. Madeleine Sumption. The

11:55

Migration Observatory is an independent research

11:57

group that provides analysis of immigration

12:00

and migration issues affect in the

12:02

UK and Dr Madeline Sumption is

12:04

its director. Madeline

12:07

thanks so much for joining us here on

12:09

the Sky News Daily podcast. Now

12:12

that the Rwanda bill has effectively passed and

12:14

is going to be on the statute books,

12:17

how many people applying for asylum in the

12:19

UK do you think it could impact? Well

12:23

this actually is one of the big uncertainties

12:25

about the Rwanda policy is that we really

12:27

have no idea how many people the government

12:29

thinks that it's going to be able to

12:31

centre around it. The numbers that have circulated

12:33

in the debate range from maybe a few

12:36

hundred people to, the

12:38

government sometimes says it could be in the

12:40

tens of thousands. It's interesting we really just

12:42

don't know the answer to that because it's

12:44

so important for thinking about what the impacts of

12:46

the policy will be. You could imagine the

12:48

scenario if just a few hundred people are

12:50

sent to Rwanda, for example, where actually the

12:52

program doesn't really have much effect at all. So

12:55

if it is a few hundred people and as far

12:57

as we understand the proposed

13:00

facility in Kigali can hold 200

13:02

people annually, that represents less

13:05

than one percent of

13:07

small boat arrivals last year, so

13:09

it's miniscule. So then the

13:11

policy looks like it's a deterrent and

13:13

not an opportunity for

13:16

the British government to process more people and get them

13:19

out of the UK. If it's just

13:21

a few hundred people I would say yes it

13:23

will look like a symbolic policy. I'm

13:25

not convinced that we'd get a big

13:27

deterrent effect from a very small program.

13:29

We know already for example that making

13:31

a political announcement, passing legislation, if there's

13:33

been a deterrent effect at all it's

13:35

not big enough really to see it

13:37

in the data. My suspicion, and

13:39

this is also based on the experience of other

13:42

countries that have typically found that deterrent policies tend

13:44

not to have a very big effect, my

13:46

suspicion is that you would only really see a

13:49

big impact if the numbers of people going to

13:51

Rwanda were so large that the awareness of the

13:53

program was really widespread. In terms

13:55

of numbers we do know that

13:58

the enforced removal of rejected of

14:00

asylum seekers in the UK is down by

14:02

a lot since 2010, 73%. So

14:06

there are a lot of people in

14:08

the UK whose asylum

14:10

applications have been turned down, but

14:13

they're still here and

14:15

therefore then have nowhere to go

14:17

if it's not Rwanda. Yes, so this is

14:19

one of the challenges that the UK faces and

14:21

also we've seen it in a number of other

14:23

countries as well that while we've actually had a

14:25

growing share of people who are accepted for

14:27

asylum, so actually unusually the majority

14:29

of people who claim asylum in recent years

14:32

have been given a grant if they've had

14:34

that decision made on their claim. Those

14:37

who aren't successful in the asylum system

14:39

are relatively unlikely to be removed. And

14:41

there are all sorts of reasons for

14:44

that. There are countries where effectively the

14:46

UK doesn't have any agreement with places

14:48

like Iraq, for example, there are people

14:51

maybe refuse to sign them for Iraq, but

14:53

the UK basically doesn't really return people to

14:55

those countries. So that has been the real

14:57

challenge. to

15:00

remove some of those people. I

15:02

don't know whether the Rwanda program will facilitate

15:04

that, but it's not just designed for people

15:06

who've been refused asylum. That the important innovation

15:08

I think and what is quite controversial about

15:10

the Rwanda deal is that

15:12

it applies not to the Faronic people who've

15:15

had their claims refused, but to

15:17

people who haven't yet had a decision and who may

15:19

well have had a positive grant of refugee

15:22

status if they had remained in the UK

15:24

system. Migration of people seems

15:26

to be on the increase around

15:29

the world. So what are other countries

15:31

doing that we have good relationships with?

15:33

And I'm thinking Australia and

15:35

the US in particular, what are they doing

15:38

to tackle what they may see as

15:41

an immigration problem? Yeah,

15:43

so it's important here obviously to distinguish

15:45

between migration as a whole, the vast

15:47

majority of which involves people moving on

15:49

visas through normal legal channels

15:52

and asylum, which is obviously what

15:54

the Rwanda legislation is about. And

15:57

we've seen in other countries, if you look particularly

15:59

at that. asylum piece of the

16:01

debate. Many countries are also struggling with

16:03

this. The US, for example, as I

16:06

mentioned, the US has a very large

16:08

backlog of asylum claims and people waiting

16:10

multiple years for an asylum claim. More

16:12

generally, actually, over the last, I mean,

16:15

I would say 20, 30, 40

16:17

years, there's been a general trend which you

16:19

have a lot of countries that have signed

16:22

the refugee convention and they have said we

16:24

will offer protection to refugees if they've arrived

16:26

on our territory, but then try and make

16:28

it as difficult as possible for people

16:30

to arrive or try and dissuade them

16:33

from arriving through these deterrence

16:36

measures. So you have a sort of inbuilt

16:38

tension between wanting to uphold the

16:40

letter of the agreements that have

16:42

been signed, but also not really

16:44

wanting to follow through on those

16:46

obligations, so trying to find ways

16:48

to minimize their exposure to hosting

16:50

refugees. I mean, really, are we

16:52

talking things like double standards because the

16:55

UK has taken in thousands of

16:57

refugees from Ukraine and many people

16:59

have opened their doors

17:01

and helped people out, but it's not

17:03

the same for those who

17:05

are arriving via different means? Policymakers

17:08

in the UK and I think often in

17:10

other countries often don't like asylum

17:12

because you've got to, but if they have

17:14

a visa route, something like the Ukrainian route,

17:16

then it goes through an orderly channel, they're

17:18

able to decide who they're going to accept

17:20

or reject, they can screen people in advance

17:22

and they can also make the decisions according

17:24

to what's politically popular. So they might say,

17:26

yes, we want to offer support in the

17:29

case of this crisis, whether it's Ukraine or

17:31

Afghanistan, but then not necessarily

17:33

offer support in other cases. What's

17:35

different about asylum is that the government doesn't

17:37

have that level of control. They signed a

17:39

refugee convention saying that if people are refugees and

17:41

they've arrived on the territory, then they won't support

17:44

them and they won't send them back to

17:46

countries where they could be in danger, but

17:48

they're not able to take and choose

17:50

the refugees in the same way. We

17:52

do see very different attitudes towards

17:54

different groups of refugees. Madeline, back

17:56

to the current situation and it

17:58

is another sound. day with

18:01

five people having died trying to cross

18:03

the channel from France towards

18:05

the UK. No one

18:07

wins with the small boats trying to cross.

18:10

It's so dangerous for people and

18:12

if they do get here now as we're

18:15

seeing applications are not

18:17

processed particularly quickly if

18:19

at all. I'm going to

18:21

ask that difficult question. Is there a silver bullet

18:23

to solve all of this or is it

18:26

just governments trying to

18:28

tackle a monumental challenge

18:30

that's going to take a

18:32

lot more than just a Rwanda bill

18:34

to sort out? I'm

18:36

afraid it's just one of these

18:38

things that's really difficult. There are

18:40

relatively few enforcement options to

18:43

prevent people from making the crossing and to

18:45

the extent that any enforcement options exist

18:47

then they have to be conducted

18:50

in cooperation with the French. The

18:52

deterrence policies that try and dissuade

18:54

people from coming to claim asylum.

18:57

The research suggests that they're not tremendously

18:59

effective. Another option that often comes out

19:01

is the idea of what if you

19:03

offer safe visa routes for people to

19:05

come then they won't need to make the

19:08

dangerous crossings. And we see in some cases obviously

19:10

with Ukraine there is a visa route open, it's

19:12

very large and generous and we

19:14

don't see Ukrainians crossing in four months because

19:16

they'd rather come on a visa. At the

19:18

same time that is a very big program

19:20

and so it's much harder to know whether

19:22

you would have an impact of that kind.

19:24

If you had a smaller capped program then

19:27

it's possible that once the slops have been

19:29

used up on that program people would continue

19:31

to cross using the dangerous routes

19:33

like the channel. So I

19:35

think there are measures that work

19:37

at the margins but I don't think that there's any

19:39

single measure that's going to solve the problem of an

19:42

item of red. The

19:47

Prime Minister has said of course that planes

19:49

could take off for Rwanda in the summer

19:52

and that he believes the small boat crossings

19:54

must stop out of compassion more than anything

19:56

else. But the challenges for

19:58

the policy do not end the there. The

20:01

Human Rights Commissioner at the Council

20:03

for Europe says it still raises

20:05

major concerns, while here unions have

20:07

warned that civil servants may not

20:09

comply with it. They're just two examples

20:11

of why the approach to stopping the boats

20:14

is anything but plain sailing. Thanks

20:17

for listening to this episode of The Sky News

20:19

Daily. I'm Matt Barbette. Bye bye.