Rwanda Bill set for parliamentary showdown as Sunak eyes flights this spring

Rishi Sunak said he still hopes to get a flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda off the ground this spring as he braced for a parliamentary showdown over the scheme.

MPs are expected to reject changes made by the Lords to the Government’s Rwanda legislation, setting up a battle with peers which could delay the Bill’s passage until after Easter.

Downing Street said the Government believed it had “the right Bill” and “it remains our plan to get it through as quickly as possible”.

Officials “are identifying and have identified the cohort of people who will be the first to board flights” to Rwanda, No 10 said.

“We’re obviously continuing to work at pace on that, such that the first flights are ready to go in the weeks after the Bill passes,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.

When the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill was in the Lords, peers rewrote it with a total of 10 changes which watered down the legislation.

With a Tory majority in the Commons, the Government will seek to reverse the defeats from the Lords, sending the Bill back to the upper chamber on Wednesday – a process known as ping-pong.

The Commons goes into its Easter recess at the close of business on March 26, with peers heading away from Westminster a day later, meaning that if the Lords maintain their resistance to the legislation it is unlikely to pass before the break.

But officials believe that will still leave just enough time for Mr Sunak to meet his pledge of getting a plane in the air this spring.

The Prime Minister said: “I am still committed to the timeline that I set out previously, which is we aim to get a flight off in the spring.

“It’s important that we get the Rwanda scheme up and running because we need to have a deterrent.

“We need to make it clear that if you come here illegally, you won’t be able to stay and we will be able to remove you. That is the only way to properly solve the issue of illegal migration.

“We’ve made good progress. Boat numbers were down by a third last year. That shows that our plan is working, but in order to finish the job, we need the Rwanda scheme through.”

The Times reported that the first flights were unlikely to take off before mid-May, and that Kigali wanted to test the policy with a pause of two months after it accepted the first tranche of migrants.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said “we don’t recognise that specific story” but added: “We are going to work with the government of Rwanda to ensure that there is smooth processing of each cohort of illegal migrants.”