Rishi Sunak defeats rebels over Rwanda immigration Bill

Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak has held off a backbench rebellion that threatened to engulf the ruling Conservative party, by winning a vote on his government’s set piece immigration legislation.

A wider rebellion from the Tory right wing initially feared by Number 10 failed to materialise, as the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill comfortably passed its second reading in the House of Commons. It was backed by 313 MPs, with 269 voting against.

None of the Tory rebels who threatened to vote against the legislation did so. About 38 of them abstained. The government would have lost if 57 Tories had abstained, or if 29 had voted against.

A loss for Mr Sunak would have brought his position as prime minister into question and brought Britain closer to a general election.

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[ Analysis: Sunak beats the Tory rebels after smoked salmon breakfast  ]

However, in winning the vote he may have succeeded only in delaying a bigger row with the rebels. They said they will return to seek amendments to toughen the legislation when it comes back to the Commons for its third reading after Christmas.

Mark Francois of the European Research Group faction, one of the five right-wing factions that threatened to rebel, told journalists that Mr Sunak had promised to listen to proposals for amendments. “Let’s take this up again in January,” he said.

Among the government MPs to abstain were Suella Braverman, who was sacked last month as home secretary, and Robert Jenrick, who quit as immigration minister last week.

[ Rishi Sunak faces trouble at every turn over Rwanda Bill ]

The vote took place at 7pm on Tuesday after a tense 6½-hour debate in the Commons chamber. It capped a day of high drama at Westminster that was reminiscent of former prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit struggles in 2019.

Tory whips and senior cabinet members spent the day cajoling the party’s backbench MPs to support the Bill. It seeks to declare Rwanda a safe country to which to deport illegal immigrants and is aimed at overcoming a supreme court judgment that scuppered a British deal with the African country, which has agreed to take asylum seekers who arrive in the UK illegally.

The issue is wrapped up in Mr Sunak’s political promise to “stop the boats” of asylum seekers who arrive on British beaches from France.

[ British immigration minister Robert Jenrick quits after new Rwanda legislation unveiled ]

Rebels had threatened to block Mr Sunak’s Bill because it does not contain a provision to bar individual deportees from court cases to their removal to Rwanda.

The government published legal advice which said this would breach international law, such as the European Convention on Human Rights. Rwanda also said it would pull out of the arrangement if it broke international law.

Pressure was heaped on Mr Sunak last week when Mr Jenrick resigned in protest at the Bill, which he said was a “triumph of hope over experience”.

Mr Sunak argued that it was the toughest piece of immigration legislation ever introduced in Britain, and there was “only an inch” between his position and that of the rebels.

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