Tory MPs pile further pressure on Rishi Sunak over Rwanda bill

Rishi Sunak is facing mounting pressure from Tory MPs over his Rwanda bill.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has warned she will vote against it unless he accepts "improvements" to strengthen the legislation.

More than 50 MPs on the right of the party, including Liz Truss, are now backing moves to toughen up the bill.

The prime minister is trying to revive his plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda after the Supreme Court ruled the earlier scheme was unlawful.

Meanwhile, former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland, from the centrist One Nation group of MPs, has backed three amendments which would tone down some parts of the bill.

Mrs Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary by Mr Sunak in November, told GB News the current version of the bill "does not work" and would amount to "a betrayal to the British public".

The legislation will return to the Commons next Tuesday and Wednesday, when MPs will debate and vote on a series of amendments. It will then face a final Commons vote which it must clear to be sent to the Lords for further scrutiny.

Asked how she would vote at this stage if there were no changes, Mrs Braverman replied: "If there are no improvements to it, I will have to vote against it, I'm afraid. I am sent to Parliament to vote for things, to be for things or to be against them, not to sit on the fence.

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"I owe it to the British people to be transparent and honest about the situation that we are in. It is absolutely essential that we deliver on this pledge to stop the boats."

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday, former prime minister Ms Truss said: "We need to crack down on illegal migration and remove the loopholes being exploited by activist lawyers.

"It's essential the legislation we are passing is watertight. That's why I am backing amendments to the Bill."

Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned last month over the legislation and is co-ordinating a series of rebel amendments, has warned the bill as it stands is "guaranteed to fail".

Illegal migrants would continue to successfully challenge their removal in court, in a fresh "merry-go-round" of appeals, he said.

The government insists the legislation, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, will allow only a "vanishingly small" number of appeals.

But the amendments backed by Sir Robert would delete clauses from the bill declaring Rwanda "a safe country", disapplying the Human Rights Act, and forcing courts to disregard interim rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The One Nation group is the largest single faction within the Conservative parliamentary party. It says more than 100 MPs are members, almost a third of the total.

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dungeness, Kent

It argues that the UK's human rights obligations in international law must be respected.

Former first secretary of state Damian Green, who chairs the group, said he had been assured 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," he told the New Statesman.

The Rwandan government has said it will pull out of the scheme if it does not comply with international obligations.

Downing Street said the government would carry on talking to MPs and "carefully consider" amendments put forward. It had worked to ensure the bill was "robust", No 10 added.

Before Christmas, Mr Sunak comfortably saw off a Tory rebellion over the bill, when it cleared its first Commons hurdle by a majority of 44 votes.

But the scale of party divisions on the issue has again been highlighted in recent days - with a number of former cabinet ministers, including Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, backing the amendments from MPs on the right of the party.

Nearly two years after Boris Johnson's government first announced plans to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda, none has been sent to the east African country.

'Gimmick'

The bill aims to stop flights being grounded by legal action by declaring that, in UK law, Rwanda is a safe country.

It would enable ministers to ignore emergency orders from the ECHR to suspend a flight there while an individual legal case was being heard.

But rebels insist it would still allow the policy to be derailed by a wave of individual appeals, and want to tighten the circumstances in which they would be allowed.

They also want to make it the default position that ministers would ignore ECHR injunctions, blocking flights.

The prime minister has promised to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats and argues his Rwanda scheme will prove a significant deterrent.

Labour says the scheme is a hugely expensive "gimmick" which will not work, and Sir Keir Starmer has accused Mr Sunak of being "taken hostage by his own party".

It says it would tackle illegal migration by prioritising the smashing of people-smuggling gangs.

'Safe routes'

The government has a working Commons majority over other parties and independent MPs of 56, implying that 29 Conservative MPs would need to vote against the bill to defeat it.

But in practice that majority is larger because some independent MPs usually vote with the government and others tend to be absent.

In addition to this, some Tory rebels are likely to abstain, while others may also vote with the government.

If the bill does clear its Commons stages, it is likely to face prolonged opposition in the Lords.

Meanwhile, the Home Office has published a report on "safe and legal routes" for migrants seeking to enter the UK, but it does not list any new routes.

Campaigners have long argued that the government needs to provide safe routes for people seeking refuge from war and oppression, to help tackle illegal migration.

During debates on the Illegal Migration Act, which became law in July 2023 and bars anyone entering the UK illegally from claiming asylum, ministers promised to "specify additional safe and legal routes".

No 10 said there were already a significant number of routes and its priority was to secure the UK's borders.

"While the compassion of the UK is clearly unlimited, our capacity is not," the prime minister's spokesman added.

In a written statement to Parliament, Home Secretary James Cleverly said the report reaffirmed the government's "commitment to providing safe and legal routes for those most in need".

"As we get control on numbers, we will keep under review whether we are able to do more to support vulnerable refugees and whether we need to consider new safe and legal routes," he added.

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon described the report as "woefully inadequate with no meaningful commitment to expand safe routes for refugees from war-torn countries such as Sudan and Syria, and those fleeing repressive regimes in countries such as Iran".

"By simply focusing on describing the existing limited schemes, the government has completely overlooked the urgent need to reduce dangerous Channel crossings by providing safe passage to our shores," he said.