Image source, House of Commons

The Labour MP Stella Creasy joins the debate, and speaks about her amendment which is concerned with how the Rwanda bill affects the Good Friday Agreement - which brought an end to 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland.

She says the Rwanda bill diminishes the rights of people in the UK by removing the protection of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

She says the bill would not just have consequences for the UK's immigration system, but wider issues because the Good Friday Agreement incorporates the ECHR into Northern Ireland law as a protection against what she describes as "over-reaching government".

"When we start removing those rights, which this bill does by denying a refugee the right to go to court under article 13, then we start undermining the Good Friday Agreement".

Creasy says damaging the Good Friday Agreement would weaken the UK's relationship with Europe, just at a time when rebuilding post-Brexit relationships are so important.

Dominic Casciani
Home and legal correspondent

The way the Safety of Rwanda Bill is written, the European Court of Human Rights may find itself being at the centre of the debate.

Here’s why. The legislation tells British judges to find Rwanda to be safe, despite the Supreme Court saying last year it is not.

It also bans them from considering whether safeguards in a variety of laws stand in the government’s way.

On that basis, it’s possible that the Supreme Court could ultimately be asked to rule that the plan is incompatible with the protections against ill treatment in the European Convention on Human Rights.

If ministers then ignored the Supreme Court and filled up a plane, the passengers would still have the legal right to knock on the Strasbourg-based court’s door saying they’ve been denied a final legal remedy.

And that’s why ministers are flirting with taking a power to ignore the ECHR if it then says the flight must be stopped.

Conservative member of parliament Sir Robert Buckland KC argues that the Rwanda Bill does not mean the UK's processing would be done offshore. Instead, it is the "wholesale handing to another country" to determine asylum applications.

He adds that he is not in favour of certain clauses in the bill, arguing that they make the piece of legislation too wordy and therefore more vulnerable.

The more words there are in the bill, he says, the more open it remains to a legal challenge.

Gavin Robinson, the Democratic Unionist Party MP for MP Belfast East, takes issue with the inconsistency of deeming Rwanda a safe country, yet accepting refugees from there.

"It is incongruous to me how a country deemed safe by this parliament is capable of producing refugees. And I haven’t heard a robust argument to the contrary as to how this is not an inconsistent position," Robinson says.

He says that he finds the situation "thoroughly inconsistent".

Minister of State for Illegal Migration Michael Tomlinson says that it is due to the fact that Rwanda hosts over a hundred thousand refugees from other countries.

To that, Robinson answers that the bill does not specify there will only be refugees from other countries coming from Rwanda and invites the minister to contradict him, which he doesn't do.

Harry Farley
Political correspondent

Downing Street has said it is “confident” its Rwanda Bill will pass today.

Asked about the president of Rwanda comments that he will return UK taxpayers' money if no asylum seekers arrive, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “Our focus is on securing the progress of the bill through the house. We are confident in our ability to do that. The public are clear that they want us to do more to tackle illegal migration.”

Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said Labour had not had any conversations about a potential refund.

“We don’t believe the Rwanda scheme is the right way forward. It is not workable. It is not effective and it’s certainly not value for money,” he said.

Pressed on whether he would rule out asking for a refund, Starmer's spokesman said he would not get into hypotheticals.

“As for what we may or may not inherit you will have to wait and see.”

Sam Francis
Political reporter

All parties have factions. MPs with similar views campaigning on shared issues, loosely grouped and sometimes overlapping. But as yesterday's votes showed , externalthey can be remarkably disciplined in organising a rebellion.

The opposition to the Rwanda group has sometimes been described as the "five families" - a tongue-in-cheek reference to the five Italian-American mafia crime families that operate in New York.

But who are they?

• European Research Group - Once the most powerful grouping of Tory MPs, the ERG played a key role in blocking Theresa May's Brexit deal. Senior members of the group, like Sir Bill Cash were responsible for several of the contentious amendments to the Rwanda Bill
• New Conservatives - Mostly made up of the 2019 intake, they represent right-wing MPs in many marginal, traditionally Labour, "red wall" seats in the north of England and the Midlands - like Lee Anderson. The group's leaders Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger have indicated they might try and vote down the Rwanda Bill. They criticise Sunak's Rwanda plan and push for tougher illegal and legal migration policies
• Common Sense Group - Launched in 2020 and with around 30 members, the CSG is led by former Home Office minister Sir John Hayes, a close ally of Suella Braverman who voted for yesterday's amendments
• Northern Research Group - Thought to number more than 50 MPs, the group was formed in 2019 to press for greater investment in "red wall" areas. Sir Jake Berry, who voted with the rebels yesterday is a senior member
• Conservative Growth Group - The group's main focus is the economy, supporting libertarian policies they think Liz Truss couldn't launch due to her mini-budget's failure in late 2022. The former PM and her senior team Sir Simon Clarke have voted for hardening up the Rwanda Bil

And an extra to the five, is the One Nation caucus - the largest faction in the party, which consists of more than 100 "moderate" Conservative MPs. Chaired by former First Secretary of State Damian Green, they say they don't want any changes - leaving very little room for manoeuvre for Rishi Sunak.

Some of the rebel amendments are based on "inaccurate and unworthy" arguments, Chair of the Justice select committee, Sir Bob Neil has said.

"You cannot legislate away international law obligations and it would be misleading to try and pretend otherwise," the Tory MP says.

He criticises colleagues who have described the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as a "foreign court" as that implies it is an "alien body".

The UK has "joint ownership" of the Strasbourg-based court, including a role in appointing judges.

Neil says while the court does have flaws - including the fact judges are anonymous and reasons for the judgements are not published - he calls on colleagues to "not throw out the whole of the judicial baby and with the bathwater".

He points out that the court is already reforming the way those injunctions operate.

Image source, House of Commons

The people of Scotland don’t want this bill, says Joanna Cherry, the SNP member for Edinburgh South West.

The bill would "emasculate the Scottish courts", she tells the debate, and it should not pass without the legislative consent of the Scottish parliament.

The bill “would be a serious intrusion on jurisdiction on the Scottish courts”, because they would be unable to apply the Human Rights Act and unable to respect its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

“The bill is an attack on human rights and the rule of law” she says.

Labour's Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says the UK should opt to get its money back from Kigali over the Rwanda scheme, as the Rwandan president has said was possible.

"If Rwanda says we can have the money back from this failing scheme, Rishi Sunak should seize the chance, instead of dragging out this Tory asylum chaos any longer," Cooper says.

She adds that £400 million of public money is being spent on a scheme that is likely to only cover 1% of those arriving on British shores.

Instead, Cooper says, the money should go towards strengthening border security and on cracking down on smugglers and gangs.

President Kagame told the BBC earlier today that he would return UK taxpayers' money if no asylum seekers arrived.

Sir Simon Clarke, a prominent Conservative backbencher, is planning to vote against the Rwanda bill this evening, bar a last-minute government rethink.

"If we pass the bill all we will do is use, or rather lose, the last year of this parliament trying to drive forward a policy on the back of broken legislation," Clarke tells BBC Radio 4's World at One programme on Wednesday.

Clarke says this is the last opportunity for the government to "fix the issue" of this "flawed" bill.

He also says he will not be swayed by a potential offer from the government to change the civil service code so that civil servants have to ignore some rulings from the European Court of Human Rights.

"The issue is not going to be the civil service interpretation of the legislation. It's going to be about whether ministers are clearly empowered by Parliament to ignore these injunctions if they're issued," the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland says.

Former attorney general Sir Jeremy Wright - from the centrist side of the party - puts forward an amendment to the bill.

He says he's worried it will mean the UK can declare Rwanda a safe country to send migrants to, and state that Britain is complying with its international legal obligations on this issue.

International law must not mean, Sir Jeremy argues, that individual states, even the UK, can judge their own compliance with it.

There's good reason for this, he adds, because the UK sometimes relies on international law to justify its actions in the world - such as last week's air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Image source, Reuters

Foreign Secretary David Cameron says he is confident the Rwanda Bill will pass its third reading in the House of Commons this evening.

Taking questions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he admits Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's flagship asylum policy is "unorthodox", but also argues the plan represents necessary "out-of-the-box thinking" to tackle illegal migration.

"Unless you're prepared to do something that stops this trade in human beings... unless you're prepared to do the innovative thinking, the out-of-the-box thinking, then you are a politician that has got nothing to say about solving this problem," the former PM says at the annual meeting in Switzerland.

Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock has attacked the government's plans for 150 judges to run a fast-tracked asylum appeal system, while rape victims wait years for trials to start.

"Just imagine the impact the prime minister’s glib announcement yesterday would have on you if you were the victim of rape, who has been languishing for years in our broken judicial system," Kinnock says.

Downing Street announced the plans despite a record backlog of 65,000 cases in crown courts and average of two year wait for criminal cases to be heard.

Kinnock accuses the prime minister of sacrificing victims of crimes in a "desperate attempt to cling to power by appeasing his backbenchers".

The government should instead focus on "pragmatic" deterrents to illegal migration, like the Labour-backed Albania returns scheme, Kinnock says.

In 2023, the government's new deal with Albania to fast-track removals led to 83% fewer Albanians being caught, external as they were smuggled into the UK.

The government should focus on that instead of "being sucked into endless bun fights".

Downing Street says that the Rwanda Bill is "extremely tough", ahead of a vote in parliament.

Speaking to reporters, PM Rishi Sunak's press secretary tells reporters that the government thinks the bill is "as tough as it can be while keeping the Rwandans in the scheme.

"We don't want to do something which means that they wouldn't participate so we would have nowhere to send people."

He adds that the government thinks the bill is the "best way forward, [to] deliver action quickly".

The ECHR is an international court that sits in Strasbourg in France and protects civil and political rights.

These rights were established in a treaty called the European Convention on Human Rights, drawn up in the aftermath of World War Two - largely written by British civil servants and lawyers.

The convention has nothing to do with the EU - so the UK remains part of it despite Brexit.

The British government is bound by ECHR rulings, including the injunction that prevented a passenger from boarding a flight to Rwanda in 2022.

The ECHR should not to be confused with the European Court of Justice - which is a separate court that settles disputes between EU members.

It's extremely rare for a country to withdraw from the ECHR's jurisdiction. Russia was expelled following its invasion of Ukraine, Greece temporarily left following a military coup, while Belarus is not part of the Convention.

Dominic Casciani
Home and legal correspondent

Today’s debate on Rwanda is a heady mix of intensely complex politics - and intensely complex law and policy.

I’m going to be dipping in and out of our coverage to help explain the thorny issues, whatever happens to the PM’s plan.

We’re going to hear a lot about “Rule 39”, which is the European Court of Human Rights’ power to temporarily intervene in an unresolved case.

Expect to hear MPs talking about international law a lot and the UK’s obligations to abide by it. Note: This is not “foreign” law - but law drawn up and agreed by the UK with other nations.

The government will talk about its recently-agreed treaty with Rwanda which it says guarantees the safety of anyone being sent there. I’ll rattle through the details there later.

Finally, we’re almost certainly going to hear some really divided opinions about whether the Rwanda Bill crosses a constitutional line by meddling with the independence of British judges. Lots to unpack as the day goes on.

The House of Commons is debating former immigration minister Robert Jenrick's amendment to the Rwanda policy.

The now-backbench Tory MP is introducing his proposed changes, saying it is essential the UK prevents European courts from issuing late-night interim blocks on flights to Rwanda.

Jenrick, who resigned in December saying the Rwanda plan in its current form would not work, tells the House of Commons that "no one signed up" to the European Court of Human Rights issuing binding interim rulings.

Jenrick adds that the court gave itself these powers, and that it was a mistake for the UK to go along with this legal convention. He goes on to accuse the court in Strasbourg of "acting outside of the rule of law".

The European Convention on Human Rights is a set of legal safeguards which allow ordinary people to challenge what they say is unfair treatment by the government.

Ben King
Business reporter

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has welcomed the Rwandan President Paul Kagame's offer to refund the money paid by the UK government for its asylum seeker scheme, and pledged to put the money towards "processing asylum cases" and "cracking down on the criminal gangs that are at the heart of this."

Speaking to the BBC's Economics Editor Faisal Islam at the World Economic Forum in Davos, she said: "An incoming Labour government would scrap that scheme.

"If we can get that money back and invest that money instead in processing asylum cases and cracking down on the criminal gangs that are at the heart of this, that would be a much better use of the money and would have a much greater chance of success in controlling the small boat crossings that we absolutely need to do. "

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has offered to return money given to his country by UK taxpayers for the government's flagship asylum plan if no refugees end up going to Rwanda.

In an exclusive BBC video filmed at the World Economic Forum, Kagame was asked about the Supreme Court's ruling that his country was unsafe. He replied that issues with the Rwanda plan are the "UK's problem" not Rwanda's.

He told the BBC’s Economics editor Faisal Islam, money was "only going to be used if those people will come" and could be returned if asylum seekers did not arrive.

And with the weekly cut-and-thrust of PMQs over, the House of Commons has moved on to debating the government's Rwanda bill.

As a reminder, this is the final time MPs will get a chance to discuss and vote on this bill before it is sent to the House of Lords to look at.

We'll bring you the key lines from Westminster here, or you can watch along by hitting the Play button at the top of this page.