Jonathan Edwards – 2022 Parliamentary Question on the Rwanda Plan for Asylum Seekers

The parliamentary question asked by Jonathan Edwards, the Independent MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, in the House of Commons on 16 November 2022.

Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)

Diolch, Mr Speaker. Will the Minister inform the House whether the British Government have found an airline willing to facilitate their Rwanda policy? Privilege Style has joined Titan Airways and AirTanker in stating that it will not participate in deportation flights. Is it not the reality that commercial operators are turning their back on the Government’s immoral policy?

Robert Jenrick

I do not believe that the Rwanda policy is immoral. I do not think that there is anything ethical about allowing individuals to cross the channel illegally, risking their lives and those of their children. We want to create a system that is suffused with deterrents so that people do not make the crossing in the first place and so that if they want to claim asylum, they do so in the first safe country that they enter. France, of course, is a perfect choice.