British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative administration faces a crunch vote Wednesday in Parliament on a controversial bill to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, part of an effort to fulfill a pledge to stop the small boats bringing tens of thousands of people to Britain’s shores each year. File Photo by Andy Rain/EPA-EFE
Jan. 17 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative administration faces a crunch vote Wednesday in Parliament on his Rwanda bill to deport asylum seekers who arrive without permission to the East African country amid a rebellion by members of his own party.
The rebels want the bill to deem as non-binding last-minute injunctions blocking deportation flights issued by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg — rulings that stopped the scheme in its tracks in 2022 and have tied it up in the courts ever since.
Conservative deputy chairmen Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith quit the government Tuesday along with senior parliamentary private secretary Jane Stevenson to join 60 rebel MPs voting for amendments to the bill that would prevent international law being applied and severely limit appeals.
“When I was elected in 2019 I promised my constituents we would take back control [of sovereignty/borders. I want this legislation to be as strong as possible and therefore I will be supporting the Jenrick/Cash amendments,” Clarke-Smith said in a post on X.
Anderson simply posted that would be voting for the amendments, along with a copy of his resignation letter to Sunak.
The amendments were defeated and the bill is scheduled to go to a vote later Wednesday provided further attempts to change it do not succeed, but the rebellion forced the government to offer a compromise in which Civil Service rules would be changed to presume emergency injunctions from the ECHR can be ignored.
The government is banking the concession to the right of the party will pacify the rebels while avoiding alienating centrist MPs who believe in the rule of international law. It would only take another 30 MPs to join opposition parties in opposing the bill to defeat the government in a full vote.
Losing tonight’s planned vote would likely kill off the embattled policy for good and be a major body blow for Sunak with a general election only months away.
The Safety of Rwanda Bill was introduced to Parliament in December by then-Home Secretary James Cleverly in response to a Supreme Court ruling the previous month that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would be unlawful because it was “not a safe country”.
The judges upheld a Court of Appeals decision in June that there was a “real risk” of refugees having their asylum claims in the East African nation wrongly denied, or being returned to the country they were fleeing in the first place.
The legislation would, if enacted, would change that by making Rwanda “legal” because “it is the judgement of Parliament that the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country” together with stronger assurances from Kigali that it will not mistreat asylum seekers in a hastily negotiated treaty inked in December.
Under the agreement, Rwanda pledged not to remove any person sent there to any country except Britain, improve its system for the processing of protection claims by relocated individuals, treat relocated individuals equally irrespective of the status that they are granted in Rwanda, and provide legal assistance to help asylum seekers with their claims and appeals.
