Will the Rwanda plan work?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has unveiled a plan to stop small boat crossings in the English Channel by sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. But will it work?
Joining David Aaronovitch in the briefing room are:
Mark Easton, BBC's Home Editor Alexander Betts, Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs at the Refugees Studies Centre Nicolas Rollason, partner and head of Business Immigration at Kingsley Napley Madeleine Sumption, Director of The Migration Observatory
Producers: Rosamund Jones, Ben Carter and Kirsteen Knight Production Co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Siobhan Reed Studio Manager: Rod Farquhar Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:08.4 | The briefing room is the Metaversal Mind Chamber, |
| 0:11.2 | where in 28 minutes you and I get to understand a big issue |
| 0:14.6 | with the help of the top experts on the subject. |
| 0:17.7 | This week, what exactly is the government's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda |
| 0:23.1 | and can it succeed? |
| 0:29.1 | Government schemes don't normally incite the Archbishop of Canterbury to call them ungodly. |
| 0:35.2 | Last weekend, the asylum seekers to Rwanda plan, which the government |
| 0:38.9 | claims will break the business model of the people smugglers, did just that. But leaving |
| 0:44.9 | questions of morality aside, however important, exactly what is the plan? How will it operate? |
| 0:51.9 | And is it likely to work? Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:00.0 | First, what do we actually know about the new plan? |
| 1:04.0 | Mark Easton is the BBC's home editor. |
| 1:07.0 | Mark, I recall that when this idea was first floated in the newspapers, the idea was that people |
| 1:13.2 | would be sent to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed for the UK. Is that still what's |
| 1:20.7 | happening? No, it's a very different scheme now. And one, actually, that appears to be a rethink on |
| 1:26.9 | the whole asylum process for the UK. |
| 1:30.0 | This is saying that anyone who comes to the UK by any unofficial route, that could be |
| 1:36.6 | across the channel and a small boat or it could be in the back of a lorry, or it might even be |
| 1:40.5 | that you've come on an aeroplane but you haven't got the visa that you require. |
| 1:44.6 | At that point, you could be liable to be sent to Rwanda, not to be processed, but to, as the |
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