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The union for senior civil servants is launching an unprecedented legal challenge to ministers’ Rwanda plan.
The FDA said it was intervening because it feared the scheme to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda could force officials to break the law.
Under a new law, ministers can ignore the European Court of Human Rights and direct officials to organise flights.
The union wants the High Court to rule on whether that element would put civil servants in a difficult legal position.
The FDA fears civil servants could be stuck between judges and ministers and that a direction to breach international law, would put them in conflict with the Civil Service Code.
The government said advice from Darren Tierney, its head of propriety and ethics, says the code would not be breached.
In a letter published on the government ‘s website, Mr Tierney wrote: “In implementing the decision, civil servants would be operating in accordance with the Civil Service Code, including the obligation not to frustrate the implementation of policies once decisions are taken.
“They would be operating in compliance with the law, which is the law enacted by Parliament under which the minister’s specifically recognised and confirmed discretion would be exercised.”
The Rwanda plan is the key part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to stop migrants from crossing the English Channel in dangerous dinghies.
The of Rwanda legislation overrules last November’s Supreme Court decision which said that the country was not a safe place to send genuine refugees because they could be returned from there to their home countries and subjected to torture and abuse.
It also limits what kind of legal challenges they can present to the courts and, crucially, says ministers could choose to ignore a temporary order from the European Court of Human Rights to halt flights while a case is still being considered.
In practice, that would see ministers ordering key civil service leaders to prepare and send off flights, even if judges have said the case has not been settled.
BBC
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