Rishi Sunak has defended the Rwanda plan after it come under criticism from French president Emmanuel Macron.
In a speech from Paris on Thursday, Macron said the policy was a “betrayal of values” and would be “totally ineffective” at stopping small boats from crossing the Channel.
Macron also said using other countries to handle asylum seekers created a “geopolitics of cynicism,” reports The Telegraph.
Sunak’s spokesman has now rejected the criticism, saying: “We don’t agree. We think that our approach is the right one.
“In terms of breaking the business model of the criminal gangs, we’ll need a strong deterrent.
“We need to make clear that if you come here on a small boat you won’t be able to stay.
“That is how we will break that business model. And indeed, we’ve seen other partners and other countries around the world explore similar options.”
Home Secretary James Cleverly also hit back at the French president, saying agreements with other countries to tackle migration were “not anything new”.
He claimed they were recognised as international solutions to clamping down on illegal migrations.
According to The Times, he said: “We always rely on third countries. That’s not anything new. That was why I went to Italy. We work with the French. We rely in large part on the French, that’s a third country. They work with us, we work closely.
“The point is, we do rely on other countries. That will always be the case because migration, by definition, is international and the solutions will, by definition, be international.”
Cleverly also said the Rwanda plan is not central to the plan to tackle immigration, a stance that differs to the Prime Minister’s.
Macron was speaking at Sorbonne University in Paris where, in a speech about the future of Europe, he warned the EU was in “mortal” danger from rising nationalism and fragmentation.
In an apparent reference to the Rwanda plan, he said: “I also do not believe in this model that some people want to put in place which means that you go and look for a third country, for example in Africa, and take people who arrived illegally on our soil there who don’t come from that country.
“This will create a geopolitics of cynicism that is a betrayal of our values. It will create new dependencies and will prove totally ineffective.”
The Rwanda bill was passed on Monday, just hours before five migrants – including a seven-year-old girl – died while attempt to cross the Channel.
