‘Politically motivated’

Britain's interior minister Priti Patel suggested in an interview published yesterday that a European court's intervention to stop a deportation flight to Rwanda was politically motivated.

"You've got to look at the motivation," she told the Daily Telegraph, after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stepped in on Tuesday, just as the flight was due to leave for Kigali.

"The opaque way this court has operated is absolutely scandalous. That needs to be questioned."

The UK government, which promised to tighten borders after Brexit, is under pressure to deal with record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats from northern France.

It is hoping to reduce pressures including accommodation costs estimated at $6.1 million a day by sending some asylum seekers on a one-way ticket for resettlement in Rwanda.

Some 130 asylum seekers were scheduled to be on Tuesday's flight but the numbers were whittled down to zero after a series of legal challenges on human rights grounds.