PM promises summer Rwanda flights as wrangles over bill continue

The first flights deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda will take off in 10 to 12 weeks Rishi Sunak has announced - missing his original spring target.

A five-month battle over the Rwanda bill continued on Monday evening, as the Lords refused to back down on demands for one last change.

Mr Sunak earlier promised to keep MPs and Lords late into the night on Monday to pass his flagship Rwanda Bill.

"No ifs, no buts, these flights are going to Rwanda," he said.

Last week, peers demanded two changes to the bill - for an independent monitoring committee to be put in place and for exemptions for Afghans who'd assisted the British military.

That meant the bill was sent back to the House of Commons on Monday afternoon.

The minister for illegal migration Michael Tomlinson refused to accept the changes, saying he was "disappointed" to be voting on the bill for a third time.

"Enough is enough," he said. "We must get on with it."

The Commons voted to reject both amendments, voting 306 to 229 on calls for a monitoring committee, and 305 to 234 on exempting Afghans who had assisted the British military.

Back in the House of Lords later on Monday evening, peers decided to drop the demand on Afghan veterans.

Home Office Minister Lord Sharpe announced there would be independent reassessment of claims with "credible links" to Afghan special forces and verified claims would be exempt from deportation.

However, peers stood firm on their demand for independent and ongoing verification of the status of the east African country as safe.

Crossbencher Lord Anderson said: "We're being asked to complicit in a present-day untruth and a future fantasy."

His amendment was approved by a majority of 29 votes, with 240 to 211, and the bill was sent back to the Commons.

On Monday morning, Mr Sunak told a Downing Street press conference: "The first flight will leave in 10 to 12 weeks.

"Of course that is later than we wanted but we have always been clear that processing will take time and if Labour peers had not spent weeks holding up the bill in the House of Lords to try to block these flights altogether we would have begin this process weeks ago."

The government has already prepared an airfield and secured charter plane slots to ensure flights take off, Mr Sunak said.

He will work to "a drumbeat of multiple flights a month" throughout the summer, he added, "because that's how you build a systematic deterrent and that's how you'll stop the boats".

To smooth the approach to the first flights taking off, Mr Sunak said the Home Office had been building extra space in the asylum process, including:

The prime minister announced immigration detention spaces have increased to 2,200 in preparation to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. But this is only enough to hold a fraction of the 52,000 people earmarked for deportation under the government's plans.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper denied Labour were blocking the bill, saying the government "has an overall majority in Parliament and could have passed this bill a month ago if they had scheduled it".

Labour would enhance border security rather than spend "half-a-billion pounds for a scheme that will only cover 1% of asylum seekers", Ms Cooper said.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: "No amount of soundbites or spin can change the fact that the Conservatives' Rwanda scheme is a colossal failure.

"Millions of pounds and years of government attention have already been wasted, with absolutely nothing to show for it."

It comes as a prolonged stand-off between the Lords and the Commons over the bill comes to a head.

Asked about the proposal to establish a monitoring committee to assess the safety of Rwanda, Andrew Mitchell, the senior Foreign Office minister in the Commons, said: "Some of the discussions that have gone on in the Lords about the judicial arrangements, the legal arrangements within Rwanda, have been patronising and in my view border on racism."

Mr Mitchell said the regime in Rwanda had made a "remarkable" turnaround over the last 30 years after nearly being "completely destroyed by the genocide".

"Kigali is arguably safer than London," he said.

"It is time for the Lords, which is a revising chamber, to accept the will of the elected chamber," he added.

Lord Carlile, a member of the House of Lords who opposes the Rwanda plan, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he and his fellow peers would "keep going as long as necessary" and not back down over their amendments.

He said Rwanda had "not yet complied with the treaty" it signed with the UK, referring to the UK-Rwanda treaty signed in December.

The Safety of Rwanda Bill is central to Mr Sunak's plans to "stop the boats" - arguing the scheme would acts as an effective deterrent for people who cross the Channel in small boats.

Effectively, the legislation would drastically limit the grounds for legal challenges to the Rwanda scheme and it gives ministers the power to disregard some human rights law.

The scheme was first introduced on 14 April 2022 by then-prime minister Boris Johnson, but no asylum seeker has yet been sent to Rwanda - a landlocked country in central Africa - 4,000 miles (6,500km) from the UK.

The first flight was scheduled to go in June 2022, but was cancelled after legal challenges.

Further obstruction came in November 2023, when the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Rwanda scheme was unlawful.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the government introduced then this Safety of Rwanda bill as "emergency legislation", which aims to make clear in UK law that Rwanda is a safe country.

Critics say the scheme will put people at risk, and the legislation undermines the independence of the courts.