Tory MPs pile further pressure on Rishi Sunak over Rwanda bill

Rishi Sunak is facing further pressure from Tory MPs over his Rwanda bill.

The prime minister is trying to revive his plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda after the Supreme Court ruled the earlier scheme was unlawful.

More than 40 MPs on the right of the party, including Liz Truss, argue the legislation must be toughened up.

But former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland, from the centrist One Nation group of MPs, has backed three changes which would tone down some measures.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, former prime minister Ms Truss said: "We need to crack down on illegal migration and remove the loopholes being exploited by activist lawyers.

"It's essential the legislation we are passing is watertight. That's why I am backing amendments to the Bill."

Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned last month over the legislation and is co-ordinating a series of rebel amendments, has warned the bill as it stands is "guaranteed to fail".

Illegal migrants would continue to successfully challenge their removal in court, in a fresh "merry-go-round" of appeals, he said.

The government insists the legislation, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill which returns to the Commons next Tuesday, will allow only a "vanishingly small" number of appeals.

But the amendments backed by Sir Robert would delete clauses from the bill declaring Rwanda "a safe country", disapplying the Human Rights Act, and forcing courts to disregard interim rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

It argues that the UK's human rights obligations in international law must be respected.

Former first secretary of state Damian Green, who chairs the group, said he had been assured 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," he told the New Statesman.

The Rwandan government has said it will pull out of the scheme if it does not comply with international obligations.

Downing Street said the government would carry on talking to MPs and "carefully consider" amendments put forward. It had worked to ensure the bill was "robust", No 10 added.

Before Christmas, Mr Sunak comfortably saw off a Tory rebellion over the bill, when it cleared its first Commons hurdle by a majority of 44 votes.

But the scale of party divisions on the issue has again been highlighted in recent days - with a number of former cabinet ministers, including Suella Braverman and Sir Iain Duncan Smith, backing the Jenrick amendments.

The bill aims to stop flights being grounded by legal action by declaring that, in UK law, Rwanda is a safe country.

It would enable ministers to ignore emergency orders from the ECHR to suspend a flight there while an individual legal case was being heard.

But rebels insist it would still allow the policy to be derailed by a wave of individual appeals, and want to tighten the circumstances in which they would be allowed.

They also want to make it the default position that ministers would ignore ECHR injunctions, blocking flights.

The prime minister has promised to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats and argues his Rwanda scheme will prove a significant deterrent.

Labour says the scheme is a hugely expensive "gimmick" which will not work, and Sir Keir Starmer has accused Mr Sunak of being "taken hostage by his own party".

It says it would tackle illegal migration by prioritising the smashing of people-smuggling gangs.

The government has a working Commons majority over other parties and independent MPs of 56, implying that 29 Conservative MPs would need to vote against the bill to defeat it.

But in practice that majority is larger because some independent MPs usually vote with the government and others tend to be absent.

In addition to this, some Tory rebels are likely to abstain, while others may also vote with the government.

If the bill does clear its Commons stages next week, it is likely to face prolonged opposition in the Lords.

Campaigners have long argued that the government needs to provide safe routes for people seeking refuge from war and oppression, to help tackle illegal migration.

No 10 said there were already a significant number of routes and its priority was to secure the UK's borders.

The government's compassion was unlimited, but the country's capacity to take in migrants was not, it added.