A reporter from the Sun asks Sunak if he doesn't get flights to Rwanda off he ground before the next general election, will voters lose trust?

Sunak says his government has delivered - pointing to the five pledges he made and insists they are making progress on migration, inflation and debt.

He adds he's "very confident in the record over the last year".

A reporter from the Daily Mail asks Sunak if ex-Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick was right to say in his resignation letter that the policy won't work?

Sunak says Jenrick is "simply not right, actually" and points to the former minister outlining what the PM describes as the government's "remarkable record" on small boats.

He says it's important to repeat the government's "record on delivery" on migration, including the number of crossings being "down by a third" when they are rising elsewhere in Europe.

Sunak goes on to hail efforts like striking returns deals with other countries and intercepting criminal gangs.

"We're doing more to tackle this issue than anyone's ever done, that's the experience of the last year. That's my record on delivering on what I say," he says.

Sunak adds that he is confident this is the right plan, noting he has gone over it for weeks with lawyers.

A question from Sky now. Has the PM lost control of his party and will this lead to a general election?

He says we should look at the record and the facts, saying the government has got the numbers of people arriving by small boats down by a third.

He adds: "We've arrested hundreds and hundreds if people".

The PM says he wants to get the legislation "on the statute books in record time".

Image source, EPA

Will next week's Commons vote be treated as a vote of confidence in your government, and will you throw Tory MPs who defy you out of the party?, Sunak is asked.

There has been chatter that the prime minister could have gone down the risky route of making this vote one where if his MPs vote against it they would be kicked out of the party.

The PM says no, the vote is about confidence in Parliament, that it gets the British people's frustration about this issue.

The real question is for the Labour Party, he adds, saying "we have a plan". What is their plan? he says.

The BBC's political editor Chris Mason asks Sunak if he is saying to his MPs "back me or sack me".

The prime minister says he is saying to the entire country he "shares their frustration" over migration and his patience "has worn thin".

He says he's pleased they've made progress in stopping small boats, but more must be done.

The bill will mean "unequivocally that Rwanda is safe" and there should be no more legal blocks on flights.

He says he is "absolutely committed to seeing this through" - adding that what is happening at the moment is "patently unfair".

Sunak says for context the Rwanda policy is part of a wider strategy to "stop the boats".

He says the strategy is working.

"For the first time small boat arrivals to the UK are down by a third. even as illegal crossings in the Mediterranean have soared by 80%," the PM says.

Sunak then cites return agreements with several countries including Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy, Georgia and France

Fifty hotels are being returned to their local communities, the PM says, as he adds the government is instead housing people on a barge and former military sites.

Sunak says 22,000 illegal immigrants have been returned and he insists an agreement with Albania shows such deterrents work.

Sunak admits the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg could still mount challenges and try to block flights to Rwanda.

He says he will not allow this to happen but doesn't spell out exactly how.

He says "it is your government, not criminal gangs, or indeed foreign courts" who should decide who comes to the UK and who stays here.

Image source, EPA

Sunak continues by saying that migrants can only come to the UK under the "narrow exception" that they can prove to the Home Office they "specifically have a real and imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm".

He says the government has to recognise this as law, adding that the Rwandans have made clear that "if we go any further the entire scheme will collapse".

He adds that the bar for contesting removals to Rwanda has, however, been set "so high it will be vanishingly rare for anyone to meet it".

Sunak says clauses in the new bill will stop asylum seekers from using international law in a bid to avoid being sent to Rwanda - which he says is a safe country.

He says every single reason ever used in court challenges - including "spurious human rights claims" - has now been blocked, except for the "extremely narrow" possibility that someone can prove they are at real and imminent risk of serious harm.

The prime minister says illegal immigration not only undermines border controls - "it undermines our sense of character".

He explains: "We play by the rules, we put in our fair share, we wait our turn."

Those who don't do this "fatally undermine the very fairness on which trust is based".

The new bill ends the merry-go-round of legal challenges that have blocked the policy, Sunak adds, saying that while the Supreme Court said Rwanda was not a safe country, the government is legislating to say it is.

Image source, EPA

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak opens by saying his new bill to get the Rwanda policy off the ground is the "toughest immigration law ever".

But he goes on to say that as the child of immigrants he understands why people get on unsafe boats to come to the UK - which he says is a "great country".

But Sunak says his parents came legally and were proud to become British, adding that there are other children of immigrants also around the cabinet table.

He adds that the principle of fairness on immigration is crucial to the UK.

Rishi Sunak has taken to the stage inside Downing Street, and is speaking now.

He starts by saying he wants to explain why he is taking the approach he is towards tackling illegal migration.

Stay with us.

A reminder, you can watch every moment by clicking Play at the top of this page.

Nicky Campbell has been asking people to share their views on the Rwanda plan and Robert Jenrick's resignation this morning on his Radio 5 Live show. Here's what some of the callers had to say:

Sandy, from Thame in Oxfordshire, expresses disappointment with Jenrick's decision, adding that the Tories need to stop the "ridiculous squabbling" and get behind Sunak.

She describes the resignation as "pathetic" and self-defeating because she "wouldn't trust him now", criticising Jenrick for saying the policy des not go far enough without providing his own solutions.

Tricia in Worsley, Manchester, says while she accepts the UK requires a level of immigration, she argues the country does not need people moving here and "bringing half a dozen family members that don’t contribute anything".

She says there is nothing wrong with the Rwanda deal and adds: "The costs are mounting and mounting, someone needs to get a grip and just do it".

Richard, from Islington in north London, is critical of the Rwanda policy, calling it a "a total waste of money and the wrong way to stop the boats".

He says funding would be much better spent on addressing the asylum backlog and the cost of putting people up in hotels at the taxpayer's expense, as well as "actually working with the French to stop the boats and the gangs".

If you're just joining us, welcome along.

We're going to be bringing you a news conference with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak from Downing Street at 11:00.

As Chris Mason said earlier on this page, Sunak will be doing a selling job for the Rwanda policy.

You'll be able to follow live text coverage here and stream the press conference when it gets under way.

Downing Street has moved to announce who will replace Robert Jenrick who quit last night as immigration minister.

But No 10 has decided to split the role. So Michael Tomlinson has been appointed Minister for Illegal Migration in the Home Office, with Tom Pursglove as Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the BBC the government "can't keep failing the British people" on illegal immigration and urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to change course.

She told Radio 4's Today programme that plan after plan had been put forward and "they have all failed".

She said "the sorry truth" was that the government's new Rwanda Bill "won't work and will not stop the boats - it needed to "totally exclude international law".

Image source, Getty Images

While much of the attention this morning has been on Suella Braverman and her views on the government's Rwanda policy, it was up to minister Chris Heaton-Harris to defend it on broadcast outlets earlier.

The Northern Ireland secretary insisted the government "is going to keep its promises to the British public".

"We all know we need to stop the boats," he said.

Heaton-Harris said the government's view is that Rwanda is a "safe country"

Challenged on the Supreme Court's rejection of the policy- which said there were no guarantees rwanda would not return refugees to the country they had fled - he again said Rwanda is safe.

Asked if the government has effectively made it safe just by passing a law saying it is, Heaton-Harris denied this and said "a whole host of evidence" will be presented to Parliament to show what steps the government has made to make sure the policy is safe and legally binding.

Chris Mason
Political editor

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is going to hold a news conference in Downing Street at 11:00.

It is an indication of the tight spot he finds himself in - a hastily arranged appointment with journalists, and a big time selling job.

He will set out why he believes his Rwanda plan - derided publicly by both former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick in the hours since it was published last night - is the only way to get some migrants on planes to the African country before the election.

Braverman, Jenrick and plenty of other Conservative MPs think the plan is a dud that won’t work.

But this news conference is about something bigger than this one policy.

It is about authority and where it lies.

Does Rishi Sunak command it, or is it slipping away with his own party?

I’ll be there in Downing Street in the hope of asking a question.

Follow it all here.

Downing Street and Tories hurtling down a cul-de-sacpublished at 09:49 Greenwich Mean Time 7 December 2023

09:49 GMT 7 December 2023

Chris Mason
Political editor

Image source, PA Media

So lukewarm, so tepid were Suella Braverman’s words about Rishi Sunak, it felt as if ice was floating on the top of them.

Will Sunak lead the Conservatives into the general election?

The conventional answer to that question, from a Conservative MP and with a general election campaign a year at way at most, is yes.

"I hope he does," Braverman said instead.

Key word there: "Hope".

And it was a conditional hope. Conditional on doing what she thinks is necessary on Rwanda, and which No 10 says it won’t do, it can’t do.

In other words, it seems Downing Street and a large chunk of Conservatives are hurtling down a cul-de-sac.

And we all know what happens to the road at the end of a cul-de-sac.

So Sunak has a persuasion job on his hands - convincing those in his party who think he’s wrong to change direction. As they demand he does.

Image source, EPA

In her interview with the BBC, Suella Braverman was challenged on comments by a former supreme court justice who said the government's plan will prevent courts from blocking Rwanda flights.

The former home secretary, who is a qualified barrister, said she disagreed with the assessment of Lord Jonathan Sumption.

Sumption, who sat on the UK's highest court between 2012 and 2018, has argued once the government says Rwanda is safe through legistation, the courts "have got to treat it as safe, whether it is or not".

He said to do this the courts would have to "disapply parts" of the European Convention on Human Rights to achieve this, as access to a court is a key provision of the convention.

"The government's whole scheme depends on ensuring that the courts do not receive complaints about deportation to Rwanda," Sumption added.