Rishi Sunak is facing a fresh headache when the Rwanda deportation bill returns to the House of Lords, with peers set to impose a fresh defeat on the prime minister.
The Safety of Rwanda bill will return to the upper chamber on Wednesday, with peers expected to seek to amend the legislation yet again.
It comes after the PM avoided a rebellion over his flagship plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda on Monday, with MPs overturning all attempts by the House of Lords to change his deportation legislation.
It meant Mr Sunak maintained his hope of flights to Kigali taking off this spring, but further delays by peers could still frustrate the PM’s plans.
The Prime Minister said he was still committed to the timeline (Yui Mok/PA)
The government saw off 10 amendments from peers to the Safety of Rwanda bill, after a minister had accused the Lords of trying to “wreck” the legislation.
But the parliamentary showdown over the flagship Bill will continue on Wednesday, when peers will again seek to press for changes in a process known as “ping-pong”.
Labour is poised to back around five amendments to the bill, which if passed could see passage of the legislation delayed for weeks.
Former Labour lord chancellor Charlie Falconer said it is time to “rally all our troops” to defeat the Rwanda Bill and to try to hold out “for as long as possible.”
The Labour peer said Tories who rarely appear in the upper chamber would be “bussed in” to back the government.
But Lord Falconer told Times Radio: “”I think we’ve got to rally all our troops tomorrow to try to defeat it. I suspect we may well defeat many of these pronged back amendments from the Commons tomorrow.
“A win for us is holding out for as long as possible. Holding on to the next election may not be achievable, but what may be achievable is that it takes so long that the government can’t get any of its flights to Rwanda.”
The latest Lords amendments, aimed at adding additional safeguards for asylum seekers to the PM’s hardline legislation, will be published on Tuesday before being voted on on Wednesday.
If further amendments are passed in the upper chamber it could delay the next round of ping pong until mid-April, when parliament returns from Easter recess.
Stephen Kinnock said amendments to the Rwanda bill made it ‘marginally less absurd’
The prime minister said on Monday that “everyone is trying to block” the Rwanda bill from being enacted.
Mr Sunak said: “I am still committed to the timeline that I set out previously, which is that we aim to get a flight off in the spring.
“It’s important that we get the Rwanda scheme up and running because we need to have a deterrent.
“We need to make it clear that if you come here illegally, you won’t be able to stay and we will be able to remove you. That is the only way to properly solve the issue of illegal migration.”
One of the amendments previously backed by peers but overturned by MPs would have prevented Afghan heroes who supported British troops from being deported to Rwanda.
Other amendments overturned included an attempt by peers to ensure the bill complied with domestic and international law, and a requirement that parliament could not declare Rwanda a safe country until the treaty with its promised safeguards was fully implemented.
Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said the changes put forward made the bill “marginally less absurd”.
The plan, which aims to send asylum seekers on a one way flight to Rwanda, was dealt a blow when it was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court last November. The Safety of Rwanda bill seeks to rule it a “safe” country in British law, blocking asylum seekers from being aple to appeal deportations.
It will cost taxpayers more than £500m, according to a report by the National Audit Office, which found that the cost per individual asylum seeker deported could be £1.92m. Labour has described the plan as a “national scandal”.
