Rishi Sunak faces a showdown with MPs over his Rwanda Bill when it returns to the UK House of Commons next week.
Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt on Tuesday announced the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill’s committee stage will take place on January 16th and 17th.
The UK prime minister is under pressure from both sides of his party over the legislation, which is aimed at overcoming the Supreme Court’s objections to the stalled plan to deport some migrants to the African country.
Following today’s ruling, I’m taking the extraordinary step of introducing emergency legislation to confirm Rwanda is safe.
I will not allow a foreign court, like the European Court of Human Rights, to block these flights.
Here’s the plan in full ⬇️
1/5 pic.twitter.com/6MVqYWS65O— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) November 15, 2023
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Those on the right want the controversial legislation to be tightened, while more centrist Tories have threated to oppose the Bill if it risks breaching international law.
Mr Sunak has said he would welcome “bright ideas” on how to improve the Bill, but has previously insisted it strikes the right balance with only an “inch” between his rescue plan and more radical measures that would risk Kigali pulling out of the scheme.
The legislation seeks to enable Parliament to deem Rwanda “safe” generally but makes limited allowances for personal claims against being sent to the east African nation under a clause disliked by Conservative hardliners.
Centrist former deputy prime minister Damian Green said the prime minister had assured him 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” and potentially break international law by ignoring its human rights obligations, he told the New Statesman.
Mr Sunak won a key Commons vote on his emergency draft law in December despite speculation about a major rebellion by Tory MPs.
But it faces further dissent during the upcoming parliamentary stages and heavy scrutiny in the Lords.
Meanwhile, Labour was set to table a vote in Parliament on Tuesday calling for the release of documents relating to the scheme.
The vote, which will be part of a Humble Address on the Opposition Day debate in the Commons, will ask for any documents that show the cost of relocating each individual asylum seeker to Rwanda as well as a list of all payments made or scheduled to be made to Rwanda’s government.
The Opposition party has warned that the cost of sending asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Kigali could rise to as much as £400 million.
It will also ask for the UK government’s internal breakdown of the more than 35,000 asylum decisions made last year and an unredacted copy of the confidential memorandum of understanding ministers reached with the East African country.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the UK government’s refusal to “come clean” on the cost of the Rwanda scheme was “totally unacceptable”.
The prime minister has made the policy central to his premiership and key to his pledge to prevent Channel crossings.
But reports have suggested that he had doubts about the policy when he was chancellor and during his campaign for the Tory leadership.
Meanwhile, Downing Street denied Mr Sunak had overruled the UK Home Office’s plans to close dozens more asylum hotels.
The Times reported that the department in October drew up proposals to shut 100 hotels by January, but the prime minister ordered the target to be reduced to 50 because of concerns a spike in crossings in the summer could force them to reopen.
His official spokesman said: “Those claims are not true, hotel numbers have always been determined exclusively by Home Office need.
“The Prime Minister has not intervened in those decisions. It is right that we’re making progress in closing hotels. The first 50 are due to be closed by the end of this month and there will be more in the coming months.”
🚨 MSF and @DOTW_UK are now providing primary healthcare to people seeking asylum in the UK who are being held at the large-scale containment site at Wethersfield in Essex.https://t.co/SSOt2CRXx8
1/4 pic.twitter.com/0VhE89FeXQ— MSF UK (@MSF_uk) January 9, 2024
The UK government is housing asylum seekers on military bases and the Bibby Stockholm barge in an effort to reduce the cost of hotel bills.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, the medical charity also known as Doctors Without Borders, said it is now treating people housed in RAF Wethersfield, a disused airbase in Home Secretary James Cleverly’s Essex constituency.
The NGO, known for emergency relief in conflict zones, said it was the first time it has opened a project working with people seeking sanctuary in the UK.
