Crossbench Peer Lord Alex Carlile says the Home Office is 'administratively incompetent' on the subject of handling terrorism among refugees
Crossbench peer Lord Alex Carlile says the Home Office is "administratively incompetent" on the subject of handling terrorism among refugees.
Speaking to Camilla Tominey, Lord Carlile said the Government "knew this was coming" when the House of Lords tweaked the Rwanda bill to reduce the number of migrants that can be deported.
He said: "I believe in upholding the law, and the Government is not upholding the law and they have approached this whole bill in a completely legally not compliant way,
"The basis of this bill is that there is a safe country or safe countries to send refugees to but in fact they are only offering one safe country and that's Rwanda.
"A Court of Appeal surprised nobody in Parliament last week when they upheld the challenge to Rwanda not being a safe country.
"Not because Rwanda is intrinsically safe but because Rwanda might commit what is called reformat which is to send people who are refugees from awful countries back to those awful countries so the proposal is in tatters.
"It is unlawful, it is leading to people being kept in custody when they should not be, the cost exceeds the alternative anyway.
"The Government knew this was coming and the June figures for small boats demonstrates that the so-called deterrent just simply isn't working."
Earlier this week, three Court of Appeal judges agreed by a majority of two to one that Rwanda was not a safe country, and that deportation of migrants to the east African nation would therefore be unlawful.
Speaking about refugees who are extremists, Lord Carlile added: "It's a legitimate concern that some people might commit crimes and some refugees have committed crimes but so have the people who are not refugees.
"Refugees or neither more or less likely to commit crimes, but it's a very tiny minority of people who commit crimes.
"The implication that there may be terrorists among refugees, well don't assume that because the Home Office is administratively incompetent on this subject that the security services and counter terrorism police are absolutely on to it.
"And I am absolutely certain from my long experience of these issues that there is an overwhelming likelihood any terrorist among refugees will be found out and interdicted.
"I'm not worried about that."
The Court of Appeal's ruling has derailed parts of the Government's Illegal Migration Bill, which proposes to provide powers to detain and deport any migrant arriving illegally in the UK to their home country or to a third safe country.
