Rishi Sunak faces a new threat over his flagship Rwanda bill, with around 30 right-wing Tory rebels planning to back amendments aimed at toughening up the legislation.
The PM is under pressure from both sides of his party over the controversial legislation – aimed at overcoming the Supreme Court’s objections to the deportation flights plan.
Led by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, hardliners have tabled amendments designed to tackle last-minute injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights.
Mr Jenrick said: “If we don’t fix this bill the country will be consigned to more illegal crossings, more farcical migrant hotels and billions more of wasted taxpayers’ money in the years to come.”
Ms Braverman – supporting the changes put forward by Mr Jenrick – warned Mr Sunak that failure to toughen the bill would be “a betrayal of the British people”.
Writing in the Daily Mail, she said: “As drafted, this bill will not stop the boats,” before adding that government lawyers had warned it would get “bogged down with individual legal challenges from migrants”.
Mr Jenrick would not say whether he will vote against the Rwanda Bill at the crucial third reading stage if it is not amended.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I hope that we’ll win the argument first, so we’re not looking ahead to that.”
Right-wingers Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, leaders of the New Conservatives, said that the amendments were “proportionate, consistent with our international obligations, and have respectable legal arguments behind them”.
Ms Cates told Times Radio that “the biggest threat” to the Tories is “looking daft” at the general election expected later in 2024 if they had not stopped the boats.
Robert Jenrick, former immigration minister, poses major threat to Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill
As well as trying to block any role for the European court in deportation cases, Mr Jenrick and the New Conservatives are also set to table amendments aimed at tightening the grounds on which illegal migrants can bring individual claims.
At least nine former cabinet ministers – including former PM Liz Truss, former home secretary Suella Braverman, Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg – are understood to be ready to back the four amendments.
It would take just 29 Tory MPs to overturn Mr Sunak’s 56-seat parliamentary majority and defeat the government – if enough right-wingers are angry about their amendments being ignored by the government.
More than 20 Conservatives abstained at the initial reading before Christmas, but some threatened to vote against unless Mr Sunak agrees to changes. And some big names who did not abstain are ready to back the amendments set to be tabled next week.
“This is the third piece of legislation in three years, it’s three strikes or you’re out, we’ve got to get this right,” Mr Jenrick told the Today programme.
The right-winger claimed that the amendments were still in line with international law – though he argued that “vital national interests supersede very contested notions of international law”.
Sunak said his Rwanda bill will help him deliver his ‘stop the boats’ pledge
Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt on Tuesday announced the bill’s committee stage will take place next week, on 16 and 17 January.
Former deputy prime minister Damian Green, leader of the ‘One Nation’ group of Tory moderates, said on Tuesday that Mr Sunak had assured him the bill would not be strengthened.
“The prime minister’s looked me in the eye and said that he doesn’t want to go any further” and potentially break international law by ignoring its human rights obligations, he told the New Statesman.
Mr Sunak won a key Commons vote on his emergency draft law in December despite speculation about a major rebellion by Tory MPs. But it faces further dissent during the upcoming parliamentary stages and heavy scrutiny in the Lords.
The Tory leader has said he would welcome “bright ideas” on how to improve the bill – but has previously insisted it strikes the right balance with only an “inch” between his rescue plan and more radical measures that would risk Rwanda pulling out of the scheme.
The legislation seeks to enable parliament to deem Rwanda “safe” generally, but still makes limited allowances for personal claims against being sent to the east African nation under a clause disliked by Conservative hardliners.
Meanwhile, Labour was defeated in its bid to force the government to release documents relating to the scheme. MPs voted 304 to 228, majority 76, to reject the proposal.
The opposition motion asked for any documents that show the cost of relocating each individual asylum seeker to Rwanda as well as a list of all payments made or scheduled to be made to Rwanda’s government.
It also asked for the government’s internal breakdown of the more than 35,000 asylum decisions made last year and an unredacted copy of the confidential memorandum of understanding ministers reached with the East African country.
