Rwanda Bill latest: Flights given green light as Lords cave on Rishi Sunak’s plan to deport asylum seekers

British prime minister Rishi Sunak ‘s latest effort to send some migrants to Rwanda finally won approval from Parliament early Tuesday, hours after he pledged deportation flights would begin in July.

Despite parliament’s approval of the legislation, further court challenges may still delay the deportation flights, said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.“I don’t think it is necessarily home and dry,” he told Associated Press.

“We will see some attempts to block deportations legally.”The number of migrants arriving in Britain on small boats soared to 45,774 in 2022 from just 299 four years earlier as people seeking refuge pay criminal gangs thousands of pounds to ferry them across the channel.

Last year, small boat arrivals dropped to 29,437 as the government cracked down on people smugglers and reached an agreement to return Albanians to their home country.

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“I think the most important takeaway is quite how desperate the government clearly is to get this piece of legislation through on the grounds that it will enable it to at least make a down payment on its promise to stop the boats,” Mr Bale said.

Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill will become law after a night of parliamentary ping-pong between the Commons and Lords.

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MPs and Lords were at loggerheads on Monday night over amendments made by peers to the prime minister’s Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.

Peers finally caved with Lord Anderson of Ipswich saying: “The time has now come to acknowledge the primacy of the elected house”.

Downing Street had warned it would not make concessions over the amendments, which saw peers demand that an independent monitoring committee must declare Rwanda safe before asylum-seekers could be sent there.

Peers caved on a separate amendment that called for Afghans who served with British forces to be exempt from deportations.

Senior officials in Armenia have revealed that the UK did approach them about a Rwanda-style deal to house asylum seekers deported from Britain but discussions never got off the ground.

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta has more in this report:

Some senior Tories believe the prospect of flights deporting migrants to Rwanda in July might tempt Rishi Sunak to call a summer election. They feel the Tories’ prospects might be even worse by the autumn and that the prime minister would be “boxed in” and depicted by Labour as clinging to office.

However, the delay in flights to Kigali from the original target of spring means Mr Sunak will likely delay the election until October or November.

Our political columnist Andrew Grice has more analysis in this new Politics Explained piece:

Rishi Sunak said he had confidence in Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley after a London officer described an antisemitism campaigner as “openly Jewish”, reports my colleague Holly Patrick.

Gideon Falter was threatened with arrest and told his presence was “antagonising” protesters yards away from him.

In a press conference on Monday, the prime minister pledged support for the commissioner but said he needed to rebuild “confidence and trust” with the Jewish community.

The force initially apologised for the incident, but then apologised for its apology after suggesting opponents of pro-Palestine marches “must know that their presence is provocative”. Suella Braverman has called for Sir Mark to resign.

Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill will become law after a night of parliamentary ping-pong between the Commons and Lords.

You can use the tool below to find out how your MP voted on the legislation:

If your MP is listed as voting ‘aye’ they have voted for the Rwanda bill, and if they are listed as ‘no’ they will have voted against it.

“The time has now come to acknowledge the primacy of the elected house,” Lord Anderson of Ipswich has said as he withdrew the final amendment to the Rwanda bill.

“We tried our hardest to achieve something a little more sensible,” he told fellow peers.

His plan was finally given the green light on Monday evening after peers in the House of Lords gave up their fight with MPs over amending the legislation.