Rishi Sunak faces Rwanda Bill revolt by at least nine former Cabinet ministers
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Rishi Sunak faces a revolt by more than 30 Tory MPs over his Rwanda Bill as a group of rebels on Tuesday tabled amendments to toughen up the legislation.
At least nine former Cabinet ministers including former Home Office ministers Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick are backing the four amendments which aim to limit virtually all legal challenges by migrants against their deportation to Rwanda and block any attempt by Strasbourg judges to halt the flights.
It sets up a showdown next week between the Right-wing MPs and the Prime Minister when the Bill returns to the Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday for its line-by-line scrutiny in its committee stage on the floor of the Commons.
A group of 30 MPs would be big enough to overturn Mr Sunak’s 56-seat majority although the crunch vote will not come until the final stages of the Bill when it will be clear if the Government has granted any concessions.
The rebels backed off voting against the Bill on its second reading before Christmas. More than 20 Tories abstained but threatened to vote against it if there were no changes. They claim to have since garnered more support including former Cabinet ministers Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir John Redwood.
Mr Sunak’s room for manoeuvre is limited by warnings from the centre-Left One Nation group of 106 MPs that they could vote against the Bill if he goes “an inch” further in denying individual migrants’ rights to appeal and sidelining international treaties.
On Monday Mr Sunak said he was open to “bright ideas” to improve the Bill but has previously warned that if the Government goes any further in disregarding human rights laws, Rwanda would abandon the deal.
The rebel amendments were tabled on Tuesday by Mr Jenrick, who quit as immigration minister over the Bill, and the veteran Brexit campaigner Sir Bill Cash, who was involved in talks with No 10 to try to resolve the stand-off.
‘The Bill doesn’t end the merry-go-round’
Mr Jenrick said: “The Bill as drafted simply will not work because it doesn’t end the merry-go-round of legal challenges that frustrate removals. I’ve seen the legal advice and operational plans where this was painfully apparent.
“That’s why myself and colleagues have tabled a set of amendments that block small boat arrivals making individual claims and prevent Rule 39 pyjama injunctions from Strasbourg grounding planes.
“If the Government truly wants to stop the boats, it should adopt these amendments and use Parliament’s power to deliver on the repeated promises we have made to the public.
“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.”
The amendments would block legal claims by individual migrants except in a narrow set of cases such as when a migrant is medically unfit including pregnancy, or if they were under 18. At present, the Bill blocks systemic legal challenges but allows individual claims where there is a risk of “serious and irreparable” harm if deported.
They would also strengthen the rights of ministers to ignore rule 39 injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), one of which was used to block the first deportation flight to Rwanda in June 2022.
Such injunctions would no longer be “binding” in law and this would be the Government’s default position. It would effectively overturn the current legal advice which defines them as binding and a breach of international law if ministers ignore them.
Two further amendments would strengthen the “opt outs” or “notwithstanding” clauses in the Bill to prevent international treaties and human rights laws frustrating moves to deport migrants who arrive in the UK illegally.
The rebels say they have received advice from leading lawyers, led by John Larkin KC, that their amendments meet the Government’s legality test of having a “respectable legal argument”, and therefore do not breach international law.
They say the amendments would close the loopholes identified by the Government’s own legal team who found the Bill, as drafted, would “seriously impede” attempts to head off legal challenges by migrants.
In an exclusive online article for The Telegraph, MPs Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, of the New Conservatives group of MPs, said: “They are proportionate, consistent with our international obligations, and have respectable legal arguments behind them.”
‘Within an inch of what’s acceptable’
However, the amendments are likely to provoke a backlash from One Nation MPs. Damian Green, chairman of the One Nation group, said: “The Prime Minister’s got within an inch of what I would regard as acceptable. Almost all our members voted for second reading with the clear message of ‘thus far and no further’ and ‘don’t take that extra inch’, which some colleagues of the Right of the party want us to do.”
The amendments came as it emerged that Home Office officials have warned ministers that more than 55,000 asylum seekers face being stuck in a permanent backlog because they cannot be deported.
The 55,000 arrived in the UK after the Government introduced its proposed new legislation last year under which anyone entering the UK illegally faced being detained and deported back to a safe third country such as Rwanda or to their homeland.
Their claims are deemed inadmissible which means they are not entitled to any form of refugee settled status so they cannot be cleared from the backlog until the Government operationalises its Rwanda scheme or can agree their safe return to their home country.
“What it means is that they will be in a permanent backlog as there will be nothing to be done with them. Rwanda,” said a source. “Rwanda doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity to take them. As there is nowhere to send pretty much all of them and they can’t be given any kind of settled status they will be left in limbo.”
Internal projections of the numbers being flown to Rwanda, if and when the scheme becomes operational, have been put in the hundreds in the first year and low thousands in the following year.
However, a Home Office spokesman said: “Under the Illegal Migration Act, anyone who comes to the UK Illegally will be unable to claim asylum and swiftly returned home or removed to a safe third country, such as Rwanda.
“Our new Safety of Rwanda Bill, returning to Parliament next week, will make conclusively clear that Rwanda is a safe country – our focus is on passing this legislation as soon as possible, so we can get flights off the ground.
Rwanda is ready to welcome large numbers of people, and as both parties have made clear, the scheme is uncapped.”
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Tens of thousands of men women and children seeking safety in the UK from countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria will be left in permanent limbo, likely to disappear and be at risk of exploitation and abuse as they will not be allowed to stay in the UK and there will be nowhere to send them.
“The reality is that draconian new laws that extinguish the right to asylum are simply resulting in vast cost, chaos and human suffering to refugees who should be given protection in our country.”
