Home Secretary James Cleverly pictured in Downing Street this week (Alamy)
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Rishi Sunak’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will not become law until next week at the earliest, after the House of Lords insisted and continued to amend the bill on Wednesday evening.
MPs will get another chance to vote on the legislation on Monday, after it fell into a rare fourth round of parliamentary ping-pong over the continued inclusion of Lords amendments.
Downing Street had hoped the Rwanda Security (Asylum and Immigration) Bill would receive royal assent by the end of the week, while the parliamentary process was widely expected to conclude on Wednesday.
But peer support for proposals to establish a monitoring committee to ensure Rwanda’s security and to exempt people who have supported British forces abroad from being exempt from being sent to Rwanda, put forward respectively by Lord Hope and Lord Browne, means that the The bill must now go back to the House of Commons for MPs to approve the changes. This means that the process will continue at least until next week.
PoliticsHome understands that it is considered unusual for crossbenchers to hold out for so long when it comes to changing government legislation, as they generally do not want to interfere with the will of the elected house. MPs have already voted in favor of the bill in its current form.
But a Lords source described the relationship between the government and peers as “poisoned” by the back and forth, and “ridiculous” blaming of peers for delays.
Ministers have repeatedly blamed the Lords for delaying the legislation, but earlier in the process there was some confusion over why the government had not brought the legislation forward for consideration before the Easter recess.
On Thursday, the Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, confirmed that the legislation would be back before MPs on Monday, and Downing Street remains hopeful that it will pass Parliament within a day.
However, more time was allocated on Tuesday if the bill is not ready for royal assent by the end of Monday.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said on Thursday that their intention is for the bill to pass on Monday and that they will then set flight timetables at a later date. They have not recommitted to the spring timetable for the first flight that has long been cited by Sunak and other ministers.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said on Wednesday that “Labour Lords” had voted against the government’s plans to stop small boat crossings, but many of the amendments have been led by colleagues with no party affiliation.
“Keir and co are terrified that Rwanda will work and they will use any excuse to stop it,” he wrote on X. “By over 100 votes they are consistently against the right of the British people to control immigration.”
Labor has put pressure on the government to back Lords proposals to exempt Afghans who served alongside British forces from being sent to Rwanda.
Shadow Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard and Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock wrote to ministers earlier this week, saying: “If this safeguard is not built into the Bill it would further the injustice already inflicted by the mismanagement of the ARAP and ACRS schemes by the government even further.”
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