Yes won by a 16-point margin, but this was less a vote of confidence in the original Rwanda arrangement than a demand for some form of offshore deterrence. The wording itself muddied the waters: one voter who backed Yes said, “I did not mean to vote yes”, believing the ballot meant opposition to the scheme.
The winning side's case was practical and expansive: make arrival less attractive, process claims elsewhere and remove people swiftly. The floor's most-respected Yes argument proposed fingerprinting and DNA records “to make it easier to identify” people later, while another insisted, “We need as many deterrents as possible.”
No voters made a more concentrated case against this particular vehicle. One of the side's highest-rated arguments said the scheme “never did what it was supposed to do”, while another pointed to “hundreds of millions” spent on something that “never actually sent anyone to Rwanda”. The two sides talked past each other: Yes treated non-operation as an untested proposition; No treated it as evidence of failure.
The sharper alternative offered here was not simply to leave the boats alone, but to improve enforcement and rebuild European cooperation. The floor's strongest No case called Rwanda “an expensive substitute for the Dublin Agreement” and urged restoring access to EURODAC, while several Yes voters wanted a revised third-country scheme with fewer legal obstacles and faster removals.
The result was a mandate to reconsider the idea, not a settled design for carrying it out: the room agreed more readily on deterrence than on destination, method or price.
44 Opinions
It cost a lot and delivered little. Currently we are doing better and crossings are down so why not build on that rather than go back to difficult to implement and costly ideas which might appeal in principle to the hardline but does little.
Rwanda was a bad idea, not properly thought through. Not a safe country. Things didn't turn out quite as expected for the few that were sent there. If we are going to send "illegal" immigrants to other countries, or back to their home country they need to be safe. Rwanda was not a safe country. Seems that there are not many safe places on the planet. Which is why I vote no.
It's a waste of time and money, no significant numbers will get deported
Australia is clearly the model and whether it's Rwanda or someone else as long as people can land and be in the UK it becomes very hard to remove them and that motivates them
I feel like a lot of the “Yes” votes here are people saying “something like Rwanda except this time it works” which, y’know, isn’t really the question, and ignores the fact it was a dumb gimmick in the first place. What we should actually do is slash state support for male asylum seekers from certain regions to zero and bomb the heck out of the smuggler gangs.
For those from war torn countries like Palestine then the Rwanda idea should be reconsidered. For everyone else take them home
I’d just like to see something done to stop this invasion of men who do not share our outlook on life. They are entering illegally and yet the government knows when and where and has coaches waiting to transport them , food , clothing, phones … yet they will prosecute protesters for wearing masks. As I watch the scenes unfolding in Ceuta I wonder if this is our future.
At least while the boats are still arriving on British shores, if they stop coming, no problem!
To say it didn't work is counterfactual. It was never fully operational. Had Sunak had the mettle, we'd know for sure. The attempted flights caused a stir in France, and it worked in Australia. For those focused on the ECHR and the associated court (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 enacts them in the UK and could remain in force. That means UK courts and the Supreme Court have the final say, increasing accountability and leaving no third party to blame.
We need a mixed approach stopping them leaving France in the first place, pushing them back to France, summary arrest detention and removal (either back to France or their home countries) when they land, lengthy prison sentence for the gangs facilitating the crossings, criminal penalties for NGOs who assist with the crossings as well as third country processing. It needs to be all of the above