LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Following the criticism from top bishops in the Church of England, the foreign secretary stated the Rwanda flights policy is absolutely moral.
The first flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda will take off on Tuesday afternoon, with only a few people on board, according to Liz Truss, who emphasises the importance of the idea.
Guli Francis-Dehqani, the bishop of Chelmsford, who arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker in the year 1980, stated that those who had been traumatised and risked their lives crossing in small boats should “at the very least have the human dignity of having their cases heard.”
Putting them on a plane to another nation 4,000 miles away without their consent was not treating them with the human respect that everyone deserved, she said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
She was also not sure there was enough evidence to show that the whole hostile environment policy of previous years had worked in the past.
“I don’t agree with it,” Truss said when asked about the criticism from top bishops. Human traffickers, who trade on human misery, are the ones who are immoral in this scenario. Those individuals must propose a viable alternative policy. Their policy was not only legal, but it was also moral.
What she was saying to the policy critics who didn’t have an option for dealing with illegal migration was that they didn’t have an alternative, so they were criticising their strategy, which was effective and worked, she said.
The most crucial thing, according to Truss, is to establish the concept that individuals can be flown to Rwanda. After successful appeals, including alleging proof of torture, a large number of asylum seekers who were promised they would be placed on the flight had their tickets cancelled.
What was most important was that they established the principle and began to disrupt the economic model of those heinous people traffickers who profited from suffering, Truss added. That was why they were enacting that policy, and that was why it was important they got the flight out this day.Â
There would be people on the plane, and if they were not on that flight, they would be on the next flight, she answered when asked if there was a possibility of there being no one on that flight. She didn’t have a number. The principle was the most important thing, she added.
