Unprecedented motion set to hold up treaty

needed to be “fully implemented” before ratification went ahead.

He told The Telegraph: “It should not be ratified – it should be delayed.”

Lord Goldsmith said he was “troubled” that the Bill excluded any judicial review of the policy, “especially after the Supreme Court looked at this very carefully and reached the conclusion on the evidence they had that they could not say it [Rwanda] was safe and they could not approve it”.

On Monday, peers will debate the motion to delay rubber-stamping the treaty, providing the Prime Minister with the first public indication of the scale of opposition he will face in trying to get his Bill through the Lords.

The motion can be agreed with or without a vote, but will not be binding on the Government. If ministers decide to ignore it, they must come to the Lords with a statement to explain why.

Should the Lords back the motion and ministers accept, the treaty could be delayed by months.

If ministers choose to ignore it they may face a later showdown in the courts, with legal experts warning that asylum seekers would point to such a decision as evidence that Parliament did not regard Rwanda as safe.

The motion, expected to be ratified within two weeks, states that “Her Majesty’s Government should not ratify the Uk-rwanda Agreement on an asylum partnership until the protections it provides have been fully implemented”.

It is the first time that such a motion has been laid against a treaty since laws were overhauled in 2010 to give Parliament greater scrutiny over such international agreements.

The 10-point plan includes an asylum law in Rwanda, expected to pass in two months, as well as a system to ensure migrants cannot be returned to their home countries to face persecution, the appointment and training of international judges and the creation of monitoring committees and appeal bodies.

Lord Carlile, a cross-bencher and former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation for the Government, described the Bill as “exceptionally malign” and said peers had a duty to rewrite it and, if necessary, “kill it”.

He said the Bill represented a “step towards totalitarianism”, adding: “We’ve seen in various countries the damage that is done when governments use perceived and often ill-judged political imperatives to place themselves above the courts – this is a step towards totalitarianism and an attitude that the United Kingdom usually deprecates.”

‘This is a step towards totalitarianism and an attitude that the UK usually deprecates’