The government has cleared the first hurdle in Parliament to push through an emergency bill in a bid to revive its plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill passed the second reading on Tuesday evening by 313 votes to 269 despite a rebellion from the right wing of the Conservative Party.
A total of 38 Conservative MPs abstained, including former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
The Democratic Unionist Party and most opposition parties opposed the bill while Sinn Féin abstained.
The vote came as an immigrant died on Tuesday morning on Bibby Stockholm, an accommodation vessel used as temporary housing for illegal immigrants.
The Rwanda bill is designed to address the concerns of the Supreme Court after judges ruled last month that the policy is unlawful because those who are relocated there would be at risk of being sent back to their home country, a practice called refoulement that’s banned under international law so refugees won’t face the risk of persecution.
The government hopes the bill can revive the policy, which has been mired in legal challenges and is yet to take off.
The policy to send illegal immigrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda is a key part of the government’s plan to deter small-boat crossings in the English Channel, the main route of illegal entry into the UK.
It was initially stumped by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which emptied the first deportation flight with an interim injunction. The policy was then challenged in domestic courts.
Following the Supreme Court ruling last month, Home Secretary James Cleverly went to Kigali to upgrade the Rwanda deal to a legally binding treaty, so Rwanda will be obligated to treat relocated individuals in accordance with international law and is not allowed to send them on to anywhere expect to the UK upon the UK’s request, regardless of whether their asylum claims are approved.
The Rwanda bill seeks to have Rwanda recognised as safe by Parliament. If it’s passed, it will oblige ministers, immigration officers, and British courts to consider Rwanda a safe country in general.
Legal challenges against a decision to send someone to Rwanda would only be allowed based on individual circumstances.
Speaking for the bill on Tuesday, Mr. Cleverly said he’s “confident” that while the measures are “novel and very much pushing at the edge of the envelope,” they are “within the framework of international law. ”
“More importantly, other international organisations also rely heavily on Rwanda, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the European Union,” he said.
According to illegal migration minister Michael Tomlinson, “the very day after the UNHCR were advocating in the Supreme Court that Rwanda was not safe,” it sent 168 refugees to Rwanda “as a part of the hundreds of thousands—a scheme that is already up and running and supported and backed by the EU to the tune of millions of euros.”
Labour said in an amendment that the bill “will not work to tackle people smuggling gangs, end small boat crossings or achieve the core purposes of the bill, will lead to substantial costs to the UK taxpayer every year whilst applying to less than one per cent of those who claim asylum in the UK, threatens the UK’s compliance with international law, further undermines the potential to establish security and returns agreements with other countries and does not prevent the return of relocated individuals who commit serious crimes in Rwanda back to the UK.”
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper criticised the government for spending “£400 million” on the policy “without a single person being sent.”
The Labour bill was defeated by 337 votes to 269.
Some Conservative MPs have reservations about choosing Rwanda as a destination, but most chose to back the plan.
Ms. Braverman and Mr. Jenrick, along with a number of other MPs, opposed the bill because they believed it won’t remove obstacles because it leaves room for legal challenges in domestic and foreign courts such as the ECHR.
Danny Kruger, co-chair of the New Conservatives group, told MPs he can’t support the “unsatisfactory” bill.
He called on the government to present a better bill that “respects parliamentary sovereignty and satisfies the legitimate concerns of colleagues about vulnerable individuals.
“For instance, we can do better on safe and legal routes. We should be working together with other countries to design a system that respects the sovereignty of Parliament and the legitimate rule of independent nations,” he said.
Shortly before the vote, Conservative MPs from the European Research Group (ERG), the Northern Research Group, the New Conservatives, the Common Sense Group, and the Conservative Growth Group convened to discuss the bill.
After the meeting Mark Francois, chair of the European Research Group, said the groups, dubbed by critics as the “five families” after five Italian American Mafia, decided not to support the bill “because of its many omissions.”
“The prime minister has been telling colleagues today he is prepared to entertain tightening the Bill, with that aim, at the committee stage, we will aim to table [propose] an amendment which would, we hope, if accepted, would materially improve the bill and remove some of its weaknesses,” he said.
If the amendment doesn’t get accepted, “collectively, we reserve the right to vote against it at third reading, that is collectively what we have decided,” he said.
If the MPs do manage to amend the bill in the Commons, the bill still has to go through the House of Lords, where it’s likely to encounter more obstacles.
During the debate, the home secretary defended the government’s record on tackling illegal immigration.
He said the number of small boat arrivals has been reduced by a third this year while it went “up by 80 percent in the Mediterranean.”
He also said 50 hotels used to house immigrants “are being returned to their local communities,” the asylum backlog has come down to 20,000 from 92,000 and that 22,000 illegal migrants have been sent back.
