Rishi Sunak will personally try to win over Tory migration hardliners at a Downing Street breakfast. Photo: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire
Ben Wallace warned Tory rebels not to “destroy” the government by voting to end Rwanda's emergency law, a rare intervention since his resignation as defense minister.
In writing for The Telegraph, Mr Wallace urged his colleagues not to “make the ideal (but unrealistic) the enemy of the good.”
Rishi Sunak's Rwanda Security Bill faces its first vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday and he will personally try to defeat hard-line Tory migration figures at the Downing Street breakfast. Number 10 suffered on Monday when the star chamber, which advises five right-wing Tory groups, warned the bill did not go far enough, prompting calls for it to be scrapped.
But there was and On Monday evening, Downing Street insiders expressed optimism about the vote, rejecting any suggestions that they might have to withdraw the bill due to the scale of the Tory rebellion.
No 10 figures warn rebels say they have no chance of canceling deportation flights before the election if the bill is rejected, and Home Secretary James Cleverley has told colleagues who want to amend it that they will scuttle the plan.< /p>
No Tories have yet publicly said they will vote against the bill, but some rebels said Monday there was a “real possibility of defeat” without promising future changes to its wording.
p>Monday's meeting 40 right-wing MPs agreed to abstain or vote against the bill unless the government makes concessions.
Individual migrants could delay their deportation to Rwanda for more than a year through legal proceedings, a Home Office assessment was leaked to the Times newspaper.
Downing Street told the newspaper that individual appeals would only be allowed on the basis of “serious and irreversible harm”.
The spokesman suggested that enough MPs were considering voting against the bill to defeat the government.
The Prime Minister's struggle to maintain his party's unity under new emergency legislation has sparked speculation about the consequences for his leadership if he were to fail.
Mr Wallace, who was Mr Sunak's defense secretary, but known as a close ally of Boris Johnson, defected to the Prime Minister and issued a warning to his party.
Describing immigration as a “Rubik's cube problem”, he wrote: “Before anyone in my party thinks that the solution to this Rubik's cube problem is to break up the government, perhaps we should calmly say that we are moving towards in the right direction and making progress. .”
He listed refund or cooperation agreements signed with France, Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy and Georgia, and how the number of small boat crossings has declined over the past year.
p>Mr Wallace added: “Then there is Rwanda. Yes, we lost in the courts, but like every government before us, we have solved the problems and I am confident that, as long as Labor does not use an unelected House of Lords to derail this scheme, there is a good chance the return program will progress.
“Tory MPs must not let Keir Starmer off the hook by turning [Tuesday's] vote into an exercise in turning the ideal (but unrealistic) into the enemy of the good. Strong deterrence must be built brick by brick.”
“Crackers” will toughen Bill
The intervention echoes those of other prominent former Cabinet ministers, such as David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, who said on Monday it would be a “burglar” to try to tighten the bill.
The debate has split the Conservatives. The party is likely to make progress ahead of Tuesday night's vote.
Mr Cleverley issued a clear rebuttal to calls from Conservative immigration advocates for tougher legislation.
Writing in The Telegraph, he warned: “Those who say the bill doesn't go far enough are, with all due respect, wrong. And to prove that it can't work is not to prove that it can't work.”
But Marc Francois, who, as chairman of the European Research Group (ERG), organized the “star chamber” process , countered that Margaret Thatcher would never have brought forward the bill Mr Sunak is championing.
Mark Francois said that Margaret Thatcher would never have supported a bill like the current one. Photo: Lucy North/PA Wire
Mr Francois wrote for The Telegraph: “What would Margaret do? I suspect that, as a former lawyer, she would never have allowed such a flawed project to happen. She would ensure that the law was legally impeccable, even if this was in the face of internal opposition from her own cabinet and European judges.”
The Rwanda Security (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which is just 12 pages long, is the government's attempt to ensure its plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is as legally sound as possible after the Supreme Court ruled it last month illegal.
The Tory right-wing star chamber concluded on Monday that by allowing asylum seekers to legally challenge deportation if they face “serious and irreparable harm”, most flights may not take off even months after adoption of the bill. passes.
Star Chamber is advising the ERG, the Conservative Growth Group, the New Conservatives, the Northern Research Group and the Common Sense Group.
But the UK government's legal advice warned against closing the door on some individual legal claims, insisting that would mean that the UK is in breach of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
One line of the legal advice summary read: “To completely block any legal action would be a breach of international law and would be contrary to the UK's constitutional tradition of liberty and justice, where even in wartime the UK maintained access to the courts so that people could assert their rights and freedoms. ”
Although some of the leaders of Tory groups considering voting against the legislation commented on it on Monday, few spoke definitively about how their members had been encouraged to vote.
Some Conservative MPs may abstain from the second reading on Tuesday. vote, containing any rebellion at a later stage when the legislation can be amended.
'Major surgery' needed
A spokesman for the New Conservative group, which met Mr Sunak on Monday morning, said that 40 MPs agreed that “the bill needs major surgery or replacement.”
They are believed to have included Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the former immigration secretary.
A senior source said: “The Government needs to ensure they introduce amendments to the bill that address the shortcomings identified by its critics , or they will give no compelling reason to those who think the bill won't work to vote for it tomorrow – and defeat of the government becomes a real possibility.
But Damian Green, chairman of the One Nation faction, which has 106 Conservative MPs in its WhatsApp group, announced that its fellow MPs would be asked to vote on the bill. He said: “We have decided that the most important thing at this stage is to support the Bill, despite our real concerns.
“We urge the Government to firmly oppose any attempt to amend the Bill. in a way that would be unacceptable to those who believe that support for the rule of law is a core conservative principle.”
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