Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury will use his Easter Sunday sermon to say that the principle of deporting asylum seekers 4,000 miles from where they sought sanctuary is akin to “subcontracting our responsibilities” and the “opposite of the nature of God”. He will also say that Boris Johnson’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda does not “stand the judgment of God”. This information has been published in Today’s Observer newspaper and it is also available online here. I wrote about this theme yesterday in my blog and one of the people who participated was the Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler who raised several questions in the House of Lords back on the 4th of April. The Minister who responded made it clear that the she was “sure that Parliament will be fully informed when any of the discussions are concluded” and so the fact that the Government decided not to bother informing Parliament is one of the reasons why this must now be rejected.

The intervention from Justin will be accompanied by criticism from the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, who will use his Easter Sunday address to say how distressing it was last week to

“find that asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and oppression from deeply troubled parts of the world will not be treated with the dignity and compassion that is the right of every human being, and instead of being dealt with quickly and efficiently here on our soil will be shipped to Rwanda”

Let us hope that our Government will withdraw their appalling decision.