Sunak's flagship Rwanda bill delayed again after Lords back amendments

That’s all from the blog today, here is a summary of what happened:

• UK inflation fell back by more than expected last month to the lowest level in more than two years as the growth in food prices eased for cash-strapped households, official figures have shown.
• The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that Consumer Prices Index inflation stood at 3.4 per cent in February – down from 4 per cent in January and the lowest level since September 2021.
• Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “The plan is working. Inflation has not just fallen decisively but is forecast to hit the 2 per cent target within months.”
• Rachel Reeves MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, said: “After 14 years of chaos and uncertainty under the Conservatives working people are worse off. Prices are still high, the tax burden is the highest it has been in 70 years and mortgage payments are going up.”

• Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the local elections offer a chance for voters to “send the Conservatives a really strong message that they want them gone”. He told Sky News he wished he was launching the party’s general election campaign rather than just the one for May’s local contests but it “looks like the Prime Minister has bottled it”.
• Rishi Sunak faced Sir Keir Starmer and other MPs in the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions, with the Labour leader accusing him of not believing in the Government’s Rwanda policy.
• The policy faces another parliamentary showdown today, with the Lords considering whether to hold the legislation up until after Easter.
• The Prime Minister will urge his Conservative MPs to “pull together” when he appears before them at a meeting of the 1922 Committee on Wednesday afternoon.
• The Government’s flagship Rwanda bill suffered a another delay after peers in the House of Lords voted on seven amendments to the legislation. It will now go back to the Commons and may not be put forward until after Easter.

In their final division, the House of Lords voted 248 to 209, majority 39, in favour of exempting agents, allies and employees of the UK overseas from being removed to Rwanda.

The Labour backbench amendment put forward by former defence secretary Lord Browne of Ladyton marked the Government’s seventh defeat on its Rwanda Bill.

After the Commons previously rejected this proposal, arguing that such people should come to the UK by safe and legal routes, Lord Browne added a caveat to his amendment that they should give notice before arriving in the UK.

In a further Government setback, peers pressed their demand by 251 votes to 214, majority 37, for a bar on the removal of victims of modern slavery and human trafficking to Rwanda.

The Government has suffered another defeat at the hands of the Lords, as peers backed a change to its Rwanda Bill regarding the age assessment of unaccompanied children.

Peers voted 249 to 219, majority 30, in favour of a Labour backbench amendment from Baroness Lister of Burtersett to require age assessments for those facing removal to Rwanda to be conducted by local authorities.

Sending children who have been wrongly assessed as adults to Rwanda would be “an appalling dereliction of our responsibilities to vulnerable young people”, a Labour peer who fled to Britain on the Kindertransport scheme said.

Lord Dubs said: “This House has consistently supported the rights of children in relation to asylum, these are the most vulnerable people in the whole of the asylum system.

“If a mistake is made the consequences will be out of all proportion to the damage if a mistake is made in the other direction.

“That is to say, to send a child wrongly assessed as being an adult to Rwanda would be an appalling dereliction of our responsibilities to vulnerable young people.”

Tory backbencher Jonathan Gullis insisted there was broad support for Rishi Sunak and said he wanted to “call out those idiots for being idiots” when asked about the Prime Minister’s critics.

Speaking after a meeting of the 1922 Committee at which Mr Sunak attempted to rally his party behind him amid speculation of a plot to change leader, Mr Gullis said: “A tiny minority of right-wingers are agitating, but it’s certainly no room I’m in.

“I certainly would call out those idiots for being idiots because essentially all they’re doing is guaranteeing a Labour government and that’s the last thing I want.”

He added: “Not a single dissenting voice in that room. I’m aware that there’s a tiny minority of colleagues, but that tiny minority I could probably count on one hand, and that tiny minority does not speak for the overall majority that was just in that room there, that covered the entire spectrum of the Conservative Party.”

Mr Gullis said the mood in the tea rooms this week suggested colleagues were “very upset about the briefings over the weekend” and “it’s distracting their records, it’s distracting from our messaging”.

One Tory MP said it was “the best we’ve seen him in a while” when asked about Rishi Sunak’s speech to the 1922 Committee.

He said the address had been “11/10″.

“A lot of people said it was the best we’ve seen him for a while,” the MP said.

Peers have issued another blow to the Rwanda bill voting 263 to 233 in favour of an amendment on the African nation’s status as a safe country.

It would mean that an individual facing removal to Rwanda could appeal this on the grounds that the country is not safe for them specifically or a group they belong to, and allows courts to intervene to prevent or delay their removal.

The amendment adapts Lady Chakrabarti’s previous attempt to restore judicial review, which was branded a “wrecking” amendment, to caveat that prevention or delay should be for “no longer than strictly necessary for the fair and expeditious determination of the case”.

She told the House that this is a “significant concession”, and a “legislative olive branch to an executive that has snapped all others in two”.

Away from the House of Lords, a defiant Rishi Sunak insisted he would still be Prime Minister after May’s local elections as he dismissed “Westminster gossip” about Tory plots against his leadership.

Mr Sunak addressed Conservative MPs in Westminster as he battled to assert his authority following days of speculation about his position.

And in a BBC interview he insisted his plan for the country was working and “2024 will prove to be the year that the economy bounces back”.

The Prime Minister said: “I do believe that at the start of this year we have turned a corner after the shocks of the past few years and we are in a new economic moment and 2024 will prove to be the year that the economy bounces back.”

In a further setback for the Government, peers also backed a linked amendment regarding the monitoring of Rwanda’s safety.

Peers voted 276 to 226, majority 50, in favour of Lord Hope of Craighead’s amendment which lays out how it is to be decided whether the provisions of the Rwanda treaty are in force.

The independent crossbench peer’s proposal states that the treaty will be considered implemented when a statement from the independent monitoring committee is laid before Parliament informing them that the objectives of the treaty have been secured.

It also states that the treaty will no longer be considered to be in force if Parliament decides, on advice from the monitoring committee, that the provisions are no longer being adhered to in practice.

The House of Lords has backed the second amendment to the Government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill. It was passed by 285 votes to 230.

The amendment states that Rwanda “will be a safe country when the arrangements provided for in the Rwanda treaty have been fully implemented and for as long as they continue to be so”.

Peers have cleared the chamber for the vote on the second amendment to the Government’s Rwanda bill.

Lord German, a Liberal Democrat peer, has said the Government is “intent” on asking peers to “change our minds without the exact evidence that the House requires being provided”.

“The very basic safeguards the Home Office have set out in this treaty need to be fully implemented before this legislation is passed,” Lord German said.

Rishi Sunak has met with Tory MPs while peers vote on his Rwanda bill.

According to David Wilcock of the MailOnline, he was met with “the usual banging of tables” as he entered.

The House of Lords backs the first amendment it tabled to the Government’s Safety of Rwanda bill.

This seeks to ensure that the bill is fully compliant with the rule of law. It was passed by 228 votes to 217.

The Commons had voted down the amendment earlier this week, but peers’ continued backing means MPs will now have to vote on it again.

Government law officer Lord Stewart of Dirleton has argued that criticism of the Tory administration over the Rwanda bill is “fundamentally misconceived”.

Lord Stewart, who is Advocate General for Scotland, said: “We cannot allow people to make such dangerous crossings and we must do what we can to prevent any more lives from being lost at sea.

“Neither can we allow our asylum and legal systems to be overwhelmed, our public services to be stretched or the British taxpayer to continue to fund millions of pounds spent every day on hotel costs.

“We cannot continue to allow relocations to Rwanda to be frustrated and delayed as a result of systemic challenges mounted on its general safety.”

Earlier he told peers: “It is the Government and not the courts who are accountable. The courts are accountable to no one. They pride themselves on that.

“But accountability is at the heart of democracy. That is why the Government are fully entitled to bring forward the bill and why much of the criticism directed at them for doing so is fundamentally misconceived.”

Conservative peer Lord Green – the founder of MigrationWatchUK, which monitors migrations flows – says: “We’ve been pressing the Government for three years to get a hold of asylum, but regrettably the situation has deteriorated very greatly.

“There’s something missing from this discussion, and it’s the public. We must not forget that very substantial numbers in this country are concerned about what is happening on our borders, and the Government needs to get a grip.

“If they don’t succeed, the next government will have to tackle it, so let’s not be too legalistic. Let’s see if we can find a way through.”

Baroness Jones of the Green Party says that minister Lord Stewart made several mistakes in his initial statement on the Rwanda bill.

She adds that the policy is “not a move of a democratically-minded Government” but of an “authoritarian, tyrannical Government”.

“The British public is actually kinder and more concerned than this Government, so this Government doesn’t represent the public anymore,” she tell peers.

Labour peer Lord Lipsey has said that the House of Lords should normally “bow to the will of the House of Commons,” but not necessarily “always”.

He tells peers that the Lords should sometimes act as a “backstop” to challenge the Commons “when it goes too far and flirts with breaking international law or usurping the role of the courts or behaving unconstitutionally in general.

“Does this Bill being put forward this afternoon pass that threshold? I’d say it comes perilously near.”

He adds that the Bill was not in the Tories’ manifesto, and the Government should therefore wait until the election to hear the view of the people before, if it is returned to power, pushing it through.

“Although we may be viscerally concerned about the provisions [in the Rwanda bill], we are not here just to obstruct this bill, we are here to make this a better bill,” Crossbench peer Lord Berriew says.

“If we look at this bill […] what does this tell you about compassion?” he adds, making reference to a comment by a Tory MP, who suggested that by tabling their amendments the Lords were lacking in this quality.

“People who would in some cases have had a legitimate right to asylum, a legal right to asylum under UK and international law, have now been excluded from applying for asylum, even if they had been tortured in their home country, because they came here on a small boat.

“Compassion? Is that really compassion?

“The fact that they are forbidden to apply means that they are deprived of all connection with the UK jurisdiction, which has an immense tradition of judicially reviewing administrative action to ensure that those affected by bad decision-making can in some restricted circumstances obtain redress.”

Lord Berriew continues: “I haven’t looked on the Ritz Paris website for some time […] but my recollection of looking at that website is that one could keep somebody in that hotel for three years – and have some money back – at the cost that this process is, the National Audit Office says, going to cost the country.”