Lord Reed of Allermuir
President of the Supreme Court · President 2020–
In one sentence
Led the unanimous judgment that killed the Rwanda deterrent in law.
On 15 November 2023 the UK Supreme Court unanimously held, in R (AAA) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42, that the Rwanda policy was unlawful. Lord Reed, with Lords Hodge, Lloyd-Jones, Briggs, Sales, Leggatt and Stephens, found a real risk of refoulement if asylum seekers were sent to Kigali. The elected government had an operational partnership; the court stopped it. Parliament then passed the Safety of Rwanda Act to override the finding. Labour repealed that Act. The judgment is the highest domestic legal obstacle the last deterrent hit — on top of the ECHR Rule 39 order that grounded the 2022 flight.
The court is not concerned with the political debate surrounding the policy… The question is whether the policy is lawful.
What they did
14 Jun 2022
The flight that never left
ECHR Rule 39 in N.S.K. v UK halted the first removal aircraft. Strasbourg first; the Supreme Court later.
15 Nov 2023
AAA v SSHD
Unanimous: Rwanda not a safe third country. The central Conservative deterrent was unlawful unless Parliament rewrote the facts in statute.
Sources: [2023] UKSC 42; ECHR N.S.K. v United Kingdom (June 2022)