Rishi Sunak wants flights to Rwanda to start by spring Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS
The government is preparing to rush through the Rwanda bill by the end of the month, which will be seen as an attempt to force the rebels to support the legislation.
Rishi Sunak wants to start flying by spring after winning a 44-seat majority for the bill to pass its second reading when the “five families” of right-wing Tory rebels agreed abstain rather than vote against it.
Negotiations between the government and rebel leaders are expected next week before the bill returns to debate. House of Commons next week.
A Whitehall source said: “We need to pass the bill quickly and we cannot wait for amendments or new objections. This needs to be put on the statute book and then we can test whether it works in practice.”
However, a senior rebel MP warned: “If they are going to rush through this to avoid amendments, and hoping to convince the party to accept him, they will find that there are a lot of votes against him.
“This is not the way we want it, because we want the bill. But we don't want a bill that we don't think works.”
The rebel Tory MP said: “The government promised us that they would recognize that this bill is our last chance to stop the boats, and that they are determined to get the law right and are working with Bill Cash to get it right. It's hard to see how this rushed process will get the job done.”
Sir Bill Cash will lead the right-wing Tory star chamber lawyers. work with government legal experts to determine if and how the bill can be “tightened up”; Photo: Amanda Rose/Alamy Stock Photo
Lawyers in the Tory right-wing star chamber led by Sir Bill must work with government legal experts to establish whether and how the bill can be “tightened up” without provoking a separate rebellion from One Nation centre-left MPs oppose further tightening policies.
However, MPs fear that hasty passage of the bill could limit the time to resolve differences. One of their biggest concerns is Section Four, which allows individual migrants to appeal their deportation to Rwanda if they can provide “compelling” evidence that it would expose them to an imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm.
They fear he will be used by “brilliant” lawyers to file multiple claims that will clog up the courts and delay or even prevent deportation flights.
Meanwhile, Britain's statistics office has launched an investigation into whether Sunak's claims are Clearing up the “legacy” number of asylum claims was misleading or even false, the Labor Party claims.
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister announced that a backlog of 92,000 claims older than June 2022 had been cleared, in line with his pledge to do so by the end of 2023. However, it included 4,500 “complex” cases that had not yet been decided, although they had been considered.
Ministers argued that a decision on them could not be made in a timely manner due to unresolved security issues , unresolved disputes over the age of migrants, or ongoing criminal prosecutions or investigations.
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