Rishi Sunak will face the media this morning as he makes every possible attempt to get the Rwandan plan through parliament, Mirror reports.
The Prime Minister will hold a press conference in Downing Street, warning he is prepared to force MPs and peers to sit through the night to break the deadlock on crucial legislation.
It comes as Mr. Sunak attempts to turn the tide on the Conservative Party’s ratings in opinion polls. The Prime Minister is preparing for MPs to challenge his leadership if the results of the May 2 local elections are poor. A difficult by-election for the Tories will be held in south Blackpool on the same day.
Mr. Sunak is trying to come to the fore after the party was hit by another lawlessness scandal. MP Mark Menzies announced his resignation from the Tories yesterday and will not stand at the next election following allegations that he used campaign funds to pay “bad people”.
The deportation to Rwanda was first announced two years ago, in April 2022, when Boris Johnson was prime minister. The government has promised that parliament will sit late into the night if necessary to pass the Rwanda Security (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which it says is vital to fulfil Mr. Sunak’s promise to “stop the boats”.
Peers have repeatedly blocked the bill through a series of amendments, stretching debate on “emergency legislation” for more than four months and delaying flights bringing asylum seekers to Rwanda. Downing Street has criticised the idea of making concessions to get the bill passed, leading to a stalemate with the Lords.
Right-wing members of the Tory party, including former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who said the bill was «fatally flawed», oppose the bill in the Commons. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
“Unfortunately I voted against the legislation because I think it’s fatally flawed. I don’t think it’s going to stop the boats, and that’s the test of its efficacy.”
She emphasised that the law has “too many loopholes” that will prevent it from having “the deterrent effect needed to break smuggling gangs, to send a message to illegal migrants that it’s not worth getting on a boat because you’re not going to have a life in the UK”.
Braverman also believes the current bill is vulnerable to “last-minute injunctions” from the European Court of Human Rights and is susceptible to “illegal lawsuits clogging up the courts”. She reiterated her calls for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Last week, peers again amended the bill to include an exemption for Afghan nationals who have helped British troops and a clause meaning Rwanda cannot be considered safe unless it is recognised as such by an independent monitoring body which will check that the protections contained in the new treaty with Kigali are being implemented.
But Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell on Monday defended the government’s legislation and rejected calls from colleagues to exempt Afghans who helped British troops from the risk of being sent to Rwanda.
The bill seeks to override Supreme Court objections by forcing judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country for asylum seekers and allowing ministers to ignore emergency injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights.
