Lords’ third Rwanda rejection piles on pressure for concessions
PEERS have blocked Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation scheme for a third time, piling pressure on ministers to offer a concession.
The House of Lords backed four amendments to the Safety of Rwanda Bill yesterday to send it back to the Commons and further delay efforts by the Prime Minister to get the flights off to the east African country this spring.
Ministers will now have to decide whether to offer any concessions, particularly on a demand by peers for Afghans who worked with the UK military or Government overseas to be exempted from removal to Rwanda.
The amendment enacting the Afghan exemption and put forward by Lord Browne, the former Labour defence secretary secured the biggest majority of 57 as peers backed by 275 votes to 218.
Three former chiefs of the defence staff as well as a former chief of the general staff and a former chief of the naval staff warned the Prime Minister that failure to exempt the Afghans would be a “dereliction of our moral duty”.
In a letter to The Telegraph, the group of 13 senior military figures warned that “any brave men and women who have fought alongside our armed forces or served the UK Government overseas” must be exempt from removal to Rwanda.
It came as the Government was dealt a blow in its search for an airline to transport migrants to Rwanda.
It emerged yesterday that Airtanker, an aviation company which provides a 14 airbuses to the RAF to fuel and transport the military, is not in talks with the Home Office to provide the service.
The Bill, and its allied new Treaty with Rwanda, aims to answer the criticisms by the Supreme Court that the African state was unsafe for migrants deported from the UK.
Measures have been introduced by Rwanda to prevent asylum seekers being sent back to face persecution in their home states, the court’s biggest concern.
However, peers are demanding that Rwanda should not be treated as a safe country until an independent monitoring body has verified protections in the treaty are fully implemented and remain in place.
This was backed by 266 votes to 227, a majority of 39.
The amendment, by Lord Hope, a former head of the Scottish judiciary, has significant support within the Lords, particularly amongst senior crossbenchers who have been critical to inflicting defeats on the Government.
Two other amendments requiring the Bill to have “due regard” to international and domestic law and to restore the jurisdiction of UK courts garnered small majorities of 25 and 17 respectively.
However, Labour sources warned that the Lords could block the Bill’s progress again today (wed) if there were no concessions.
A No 10 spokeswoman said: “The Prime Minister’s message to parliamentarians across both houses hasn’t changed. We need to act to save lives and that’s what this Bill will help us to do.”
Meanwhile, a senior Tory MP has warned migrants from a cohort of 40,000 stuck “in limbo” may have to be granted amnesty rather than sent to Rwanda, a senior Tory MP has warned.
Tim Loughton, a former minister and a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said the backlog of 40,000 migrants who had entered the UK illegally since the Illegal Migration Act was grantyed royal assent was too big for them all to be sent to Rwanda.