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MPs are set to reject a series of amendments to Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda asylum bill on Monday evening, as the UK prime minister sought to blame delays in sending people to the east African country on critics “trying to block” it.
The House of Commons will vote on 10 amendments to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum & Immigration) bill that were passed this month in the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament.
One would insert a clause requiring “full compliance with domestic and international law” into the legislation, which is aimed at getting Sunak’s flagship migration policy off the ground.
Another would exempt people from being sent to Rwanda if they had worked with UK armed forces or the UK government overseas.
Sunak has made curbing the arrival of small boats of asylum seekers via the English Channel a key test against which voters should judge him in the general election expected in the autumn.
He has argued that his plan to remove hundreds of people to Rwanda will have a significant deterrent effect. But last year the policy was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.
With the Conservatives trailing behind the opposition Labour party by roughly 20 points in opinion polls and rumours of a leadership challenge, Sunak sees starting flights in the next two months as crucial to his electoral fortunes.
The prime minister on Monday told ITV News that the government was aiming “to get a flight off in the spring” but “everyone is trying to block us, including the Labour party”.
Senior Labour officials believe Sunak is potentially holding back from pushing the Rwanda legislation through the Commons before the Easter break so that he can pin delays on resistance from the main opposition party.
A spokesperson for the Rwandan government said it was still working to implement many parts of the treaty signed with the UK in December. Kigali is in the final stages of passing a new asylum law, expected this week.
But it is still recruiting a monitoring committee to assess asylum decisions, and hiring independent experts to advise on asylum and appeals.
Rwanda has called on the UK government to stagger sending migrants should MPs pass Sunak’s bill into law in order to ensure processing capacity.
The Home Office has identified a cohort of about 150 people for the first tranche of removals and plans to contact them once the bill receives royal assent, according to a person briefed on the plans.
Sunak suffered a big setback last year when the Supreme Court ruled against the scheme. Britain’s top court said there was a real risk asylum seekers could be sent back to their country of origin where their safety could be jeopardised.
The prime minister sought to counter the ruling by upgrading an agreement about the plan between London and Kigali into a treaty. In it, Rwanda committed to never sending asylum seekers back to the country they came from and to introducing its own new asylum law, among other measures.
The UK also promised its own legislation that declared Rwanda a safe country and disapplied parts of human rights law that could leave removal decisions open to legal challenge.
If all 10 Lords’ amendments are voted down on Monday evening, the bill will return to the upper house on Wednesday where it is likely to face renewed opposition.
The legislation will then return to the Commons either later this week or after the Easter break before receiving royal assent.
This post was originally published on Financial Times
