Archbishop of York slams plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as 'truly appalling'

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme this morning, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell said:

“There’s no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker. There is just an asylum seeker. Somebody fleeing warfare, feeling famine, fleeing conflict – going to great lengths to escape unimaginably horrific situations.

“I’m appalled at what is being proposed, and I think we can do better than this.”

Asked if he thought the policy was illegal, the Archbishop answered: “I certainly think it is unethical.”

Mr Cottrell said that of course the government should crack down on people traffickers. But he added: “We must not crack down on the people who are being trafficked. And so this seems to me to be entirely tackling the wrong end of the problem.

“The people traffickers will carry on trafficking people whatever we do, and we must crack down on them. But the people who come to us need to be dealt with with dignity and compassion.”

He went on: “I think the government is out of tune with British people at the moment. I think that what has happened in Ukraine has been a wake-up call for us.

“British people have shown incredible generosity in wanting to open their homes to Ukrainian refugees.

We now need to make that step of understanding that people coming to this country, sometimes yes in small boats across the channel, but these people coming from Syria, from The Yemen, are in just as much need as the people in Ukraine, and need to be treated with the same dignity and the same compassion.

“We have a good history in this country. Go back 20 years, when we had more asylum seekers coming to this country. We dealt with them quickly, efficiently and compassionately here, on Britrish soil.

“That’s what we need to do. I cannot believe that somebody who has gone through so much and arrived in this country in such need, could be treated in this way.”

Asked about the Partygate scandal, and whether PM Boris Johnson should resign, Mr Cottrell said that trust in public life in Britain had ‘really broken down’.

He said: “Boris Johnson and our government need to look really long and hard at themselves, because what has happened in recent months, the revelations of what has gone on in Downing Street, has really tested the trust of British people to breaking point.

“I only took one funeral during the lockdown, but it was the saddest, hardest funeral I have ever taken in nearly 40 years of ministry, to see people unable to hold and touch their loved ones.

“So people have sacrificed a lot. And therefore we expect from those who lead us much better than this.

“Work must be done to rebuild trust in public life, and it is up to the individuals themselves, and the Conservative party, to decide how they are going to respond to that. Trust in public life has really broken down.”

'We are more aware of our frailty and mortality'

The Archbishop  also touched upon refugees and the war in Ukraine, as well as on the suffering cause by the global Covid pandemic, in his Easter sermon from York Minster this morning.

And he stressed that the only way for us to come to terms with the troubles of the last few years was by finding our common humanity.

Mr Cottrell said that, across the world, millions had suffered as a result of Covid.

“We are all much more aware of our frailty and mortality,” he said.

“In many ways, in the past couple of years, we have all felt forsaken.

“When we find ourselves saying – as of course we do - where is God when this terrible tragedy happens, when a child dies, when an atrocity takes place, when Ukraine is invaded, when a virus attacks, when a little boat of refugees sinks in the channel, we must look to the cross.

“The message of Easter remains the same. Stones are rolled away. Barriers of separation are dismantled.

“We belong to one another. We are children of God. That is what the death and resurrection of Jesus achieves. We are one humanity inhabiting one world. In this way, and in this way only, will we find peace.”