Chris Mason: Delay to Rwanda bill gives PM time to plan

It is déjà vu all over again.

The government's plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda are delayed in the House of Lords.

If there is a splash of familiarity to that sentence, it is because it is very familiar. They had done it before and they have done it again.

No sooner has the House of Commons nixed their previous proposed changes, peers have now glued some more to the bill.

This is what is called ping-pong in the parliamentary process: a proposed new law bounces back and forth between the two chambers, until they agree and the thing actually becomes law.

The government has decided not to bosh on with this immediately, and instead return to it after the Easter recess.

The plan, I am told, will be back in the House of Commons on Monday 15 April. With expected ping-pong between the Commons and Lords that week.

Senior government figures hope that it will finally become law in four weeks - on Thursday 18 April.

In other words, they hope and indeed detect that the appetite of the Lords to keep slowing things down is likely to wane.

If this happens, it will be almost two years to the day since the then prime minister Boris Johnson first announced the idea of sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Why has the government volunteered an extra delay?

Labour say it is because ministers are not ready to press go on the scheme, even with the law passed.

And yes, there are plenty of preparations to do.

But there are other considerations.

There is perhaps a merit, from the government's point of view, in narrowing the time between Royal Assent, the bill becoming law, and the first flight taking off.

For as long as the process is gummed up in parliament, ministers can point to it being gummed up in parliament.

As soon as it is law, the questions are very much on them.

Estimates as to how much time will be needed between Royal Assent and a plane heading for Rwanda vary.

Some suggest four to six weeks. Some have suggested longer. Others considerably shorter.

Not all the preparatory work can be done before Royal Assent. But a lot can be.

It has also been suggested to me that given the Easter break, the plan would not actually have become law much earlier anyway - even if MPs and peers had cracked on with things at the beginning of next week.

Plus, by waiting until after Easter, Conservative MPs can now head back to their constituencies a little earlier.

Business in the Commons in the next few days will not require many of them to be around. They are likely to be on what is known as a one line whip.

This matters because conventional wisdom suggests MPs who are a little tetchy and grumpy, and prone to plotting, are better off not in Westminster. And there is tetchiness in the air - as Chief Political Correspondent Henry Zeffman wrote about here.

These days, of course, pesky things like WhatsApp rather lubricate the friction of distance of folk being in different places.

But it probably, so senior figures hope, cools things down a little.

Instead, though, MPs will be spending loads of time on the doorstep.

The local elections are six weeks today.

They are expected to be brutal for the Conservatives and those doorstep conversations may not raise their mood.

Most Conservative MPs acknowledge that the point of maximum political danger for Rishi Sunak before the election is the immediate aftermath of the local elections.

If the already bleak mood among Tory MPs is going to coagulate into action - an attempt to topple him - it is perhaps most likely to happen then.

And, right into that same timeframe comes the Rwanda plan.

It looks like at just the point the local elections are happening, or their results are being dissected, a flight will be readying for departure and/or lawyers will be readying for another scrap with the government.

It could be just the thing Rishi Sunak needs in a very tight political spot.