Now Welby ready to let Rwanda Bill go through

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has signalled he will no longer stand in the way of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill.

Justin Welby indicated that peers who have tried to amend the Safety of Rwanda Bill should capitulate to MPs, who have already voted in favour of it.

Mr Welby said he and fellow members of the Lords would allow the Bill to pass when it returns to the parliamentary ‘ping pong’ stage after Easter.

It could mean the legislation clears its final stages more quickly, allowing removals flights to begin sooner. ‘The Lords exists to ask questions, to refine, to suggest better ways of doing things,’ the archbishop said.

‘And in the end, on the Rwanda Bill, the Lords will say “Okay, we’ve made our case, you don’t accept it and that’s the end of it”.’ He told LBC radio that immigration needs to be controlled and that the UK ‘cannot have open borders’. Instead, he wants a global system to deal with the problem more fairly.

The Bill declares that Rwanda is a safe country, after deportation flights were stalled by the Supreme Court, which ruled the Government’s plan could lead to human rights breaches.

It came as peers claimed that changes to family visas were unfair to Northerners because they earned less.

A Lords committee picked holes in new Home Office rules which increase the financial sums families must have available to bring a foreign-based relative to Britain.

Committee member Lord Thomas said: ‘We are not clear, for example, why it is fair that families in London are much more likely to be entitled to reunite than those in the North East, just because on average they have higher incomes.’

‘Okay, we’ve made our case’