Rishi Sunak has fresh outrage as a Tory revolt looms over the latest development on the Government’s Rwanda Bill.
The Prime Minister is preparing to rush through the legislation by the end of the move in a bid to bounce potential rebels into backing him.
Sunak wants to get the flights underway by the spring amid growing speculation about when the upcoming general election.
The Prime Minister secured a 44-seat majority in the Rwanda Bill’s second reading when the so-called “five families” of Tory MPs on the right agreed to abstain rather than oppose the legislation.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak conducts a press conference in the Downing Street Briefing Room
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A total of 37 Tory MPs abstained on the second reading, including ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick.
Talks look set to be held between the Government and rebel leaders next week.
“We need to get the Bill through quickly and can’t be waiting around for amendments or any more opposition,” a Whitehall source told The Telegraph.
“It needs to be on the statute book and then we can test whether it works in practice.”
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However, a senior rebel warned: “If they are going to rush it forward with a view to avoiding amendments and in the hope of bouncing the right of the party into accepting it, they will find there are an awful lot of votes against it.”
Lawyers from the Tory rebels’ star chamber led by veteran Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash will work with the Government’s legal experts to establish whether and how the Bill could be “tightened” without provoking a separate rebellion from the One Nation caucus.
Damian Green, a leading member of the One Nation Group, said at the time of the second reading: “We support the bill unamended, but if anyone brings forward any amendments that breach our international obligations or breach the rule of law, we vote against those amendments at future stages.
“We will vote with the Government tomorrow, but we want the government to stick to its guns and stick to the text of this bill.”
However, European Research Group chairman Mark Francois confirmed rebels will look to strengthen the legislation.
Speaking before the division in the House of Commons, the Rayleigh & Wickford MP also said: “The Prime Minister has been telling colleagues today he is prepared to entertain tightening the bill, with that aim, at the committee stage, we will aim to table an amendment which would we hope, if accepted, would materially improve the bill and remove some of its weaknesses.
“We very much hope those amendments will be accepted – if they are not and the bill remains unamended, in that way again, collectively, we reserve the right to vote against it at third reading, that is collectively what we have decided.”
There is particular concern about Section Four which enables individual migrants to appeal their deportation to Rwanda if they can produce “compelling” evidence it would put them at imminent risk.
Sunak was dealt a separate blow this week after the UK’s statistics watchdog launched an investigation into whether the Prime Minister’s claim to have cleared the “legacy” backlog of asylum claims was misleading or even false.
Sunak announced the 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 been decided even though they had been reviewed.
Whitehall claimed such cases could not be decided due to unresolved security concerns, outstanding disputes over the age of migrants or ongoing criminal prosecutions or investigations.
