Afternoon summary
David Cameron has said that American lives could be at stake if the US Senate does not approve more military aid to Ukraine. As the BBC’s James Landale reports, he made the comments in a speech in Washington, where the Senate is blocking a further financial aid package.
In a thread starting here, Landale says Cameron, the new foreign secretary, said supporting Ukraine was in America’s self-interest.
UK Foreign Secretary @David_Cameron makes a punchy intervention in US domestic politics. On a visit to Washington, he tells policymakers American lives could be at risk if they do not vote through new money for Ukraine. This only hours after the Senate blocked £61bn for Kyiv.
— James Landale (@BBCJLandale) December 7, 2023
UK Foreign Secretary @David_Cameron makes a punchy intervention in US domestic politics. On a visit to Washington, he tells policymakers American lives could be at risk if they do not vote through new money for Ukraine. This only hours after the Senate blocked £61bn for Kyiv.
He told the Aspen Security Forum he was “worried” the US and the West were not giving Ukraine the support it needed against invading Russian forces & said they had to help Ukraine through the winter so it could rebuild in the spring.
“Anything less than that is a victory for Putin,” Lord Cameron said. “If we let him win in Ukraine, it will be somewhere else next and it won’t just be American money that’s at risk. It might be a Nato country so it could be American lives.”
He added: “If that money doesn’t get voted through, there are only two people that will be smiling. One of them is Vladimir Putin in Russia. The other one is Xi Jinping. And I don’t know about you but I don’t want to give either of those people a Christmas present.”
Lord Cameron challenged and rejected arguments made by some Republican senators, namely that Ukraine’s military campaign was failing, that Europe was not pulling its weight, that the strategy was not clear enough and that Ukraine was corrupt.
He said Ukraine had sunk 1/5th of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, European countries were giving twice as much support as the US, the strategy was to back Ukraine through the winter & rebuild in the spring & Ukraine now had tougher anti-corruption laws than both US & the UK.
In an article for the Guardian, Henry Hill, the deputy editor of the ConservativeHome website, argues that one reason why Rishi Sunak is focusing on small boats is because the Tory record on overall immigration is so poor. Hill argues:
When James Cleverly, the home secretary, claims that the government’s latest proposals will cut immigration by 300,000, that huge number won’t even take the annual inflow back to where it was when the Conservatives first entered government.
This is why Sunak keeps focusing on Rwanda, and the broader question of asylum, despite the enormous difficulty the government is having getting the scheme off the ground: to try to use it as a shorthand for being “tough on immigration”, without having to admit that since 2019 the Conservatives have been running perhaps one of the most laissez-faire immigration policies in modern British history.
This problem predates Sunak. But the fact is that that neither he nor his predecessors wanted to confront the hard choices that reducing the UK’s reliance on imported labour would entail. They have instead repeatedly talked tough, and installed a rightwinger at the Home Office with the impossible task of sorting the issue out, while allowing other departments such as education, business, and the Treasury to keep pushing policies that drive the numbers ever higher …
Focusing on the troubled Rwanda scheme is the closest Sunak has got to answering an impossible question: how do you campaign on being tough on immigration when your record says the opposite? I suspect that next year he will learn the hard truth: you can’t.
Updated
While it is Conservative MPs whose positions will determine the fate of Sunak’s legislation, the views of the party’s membership, who have tended to be more rightwing than those in parliament, is harder to quantify
Paul Goodman, the editor of ConservativeHome, said a survey which the website had carried out in July found seven out of 10 Conservative activists believe the UK should leave the European convention on human rights. He said:
In terms of how they feel about this legislation now, a certain amount depends on what positions they see Eurosceptics they support taking. Though her support among MPs may be limited, some members will look for a lead from Suella Braverman, although the picture there is also complicated.
When members were surveyed on whether Sunak was right to sack her as home secretary, half said he was wrong but two in five said he was right, which is a substantial minority.
Updated
The Conservative party chair, Richard Holden, told reporters at a press gallery lunch his party still has a “fighting chance” of winning the next general election. He said:
I wanted to come in here today to tell you and especially my colleagues in the room, that the fight is not over, despite what Labour seem to think …
Our opponents may think it is a forgone conclusion and try to keep their heads down because whenever they put them up, they make a mistake. But it’s clear to me that the fight isn’t over and it has a few facets to it.
Holden criticised Keir Starmer for making a number of U-turns and not standing up to Jeremy Corbyn when antisemitism was at its peak in the party.
On Starmer’s praise for Margaret Thatcher, Holden said the “public see him as a shapeshifting child. A major issue for him is that he means to stand for something that he can’t stand for.”
The Tory chair also said his party would be ready for a general election from February 2024.
Updated
Northern Research Group Tories likely to support Rwanda bill, says its chair
The chair of an influential group of Conservative MPs who include many from “red wall” constituencies said he believes they would support Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda legislation.
John Stevenson, the Carlisle MP who chairs the Northern Research Group, said:
I think that it will be overwhelmingly supported by northern MPs. Some may have wanted it to be more robust but I think that most will support it and I would be surprised if anybody went against it.
Immigration a big issue in all of seats in the north of England and I view this as another stage in the government approach, so let’s bring forward the legislation. My attitude is that if it doesn’t work then you would need to revisit the whole issue.
Updated
Osborne floats theory Boris Johnson not fully focused on Covid in early 2020 because he was dealing with big tax bill
George Osborne has suggested that one reason Boris Johnson was not fully focused on Covid in early 2020 was because he was working out how to pay off a big tax bill.
The former Tory chancellor floated the theory, without offering any firm evidence to back it up, on his Political Currency podcast which he co-hosts with Ed Balls. Osborne and Johnson have a rivalry dating back to the time when they were both seen as likely successors to David Cameron as prime minister, and Johnson’s successful leadership of the leave campaign in 2016 in effect killed off Osborne’s political career.
In February 2020 Johnson spent a long period at Chevening, a government grace-and-favour country home, while Chequers was being refurbished. In his witness statement to the Covid inquiry, Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, said Johnson was “on holiday for a fortnight” dealing with his divorce, the announcement of his engagement, and accusations about him in the media from an ex-girlfriend. Cummings also said Johnson wanted to work on his Shakespeare biography.
Johnson’s allies have dismissed the Shakespeare book claim, and at the Covid inquiry yesterday Johnson said he was holding some work meetings during the Chevening period. But the former PM has not given a full account of how he spent that time.
Osborne said on his podcast:
I think he [Johnson] hits a kind of financial crunch in early 2020. Because he’s basically taken the job of prime minister, which is a big pay cut for him. He has a big tax bill to pay, because he was giving speeches for money in that period between when he was foreign secretary and prime minister. And he wouldn’t have put aside money to pay HMRC a few years later …
Because he’s bust he can’t deal with Covid. That is a theory about what happened in February. It didn’t really surface, put it this way, at the Covid inquiry, but it’s a personal pet theory of mine of why he disappears in February.
In response, a spokesperson for Johnson said:
This is total and transparent nonsense and is also in contradiction of the evidence which was presented at the inquiry; it shows that Mr Johnson was working in this period, including attending meetings in person in Downing Street, receiving box work and taking part in Covid-relevant discussions.
Updated
Tory civil wars have “completely reopened”, George Osborne has claimed.
Speaking on his Political Currency podcast, which he co-hosts with Ed Balls, the former Tory chancellor said the events of this week had undermined Rishi Sunak’s claim to be a force for stability.
Osborne said:
The Tory civil wars have completely reopened. Rishi Sunak’s big claim was, ‘I’ve come after the chaos of Boris Johnson and the chaos of Liz Truss … I’ve stabilised things.’
He can’t now claim anymore to have stabilised things. His government is fragmenting around this immigration issue.
Osborne also said he did not think that Robert Jenrick’s decision to resign yesterday was just motivated by a dispute over policy. “You’ve got to be thinking he’s also positioning himself for what’s going to come in the Tory party,” Osborne said.
Updated
One group of lawyers inspecting Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda legislation are expected to return their judgment to rightwing Consevative MPs before Tuesday’s vote, PA Media reports. The European Research Group (ERG) chair and MP Mark Francois said:
We all agree with the prime minister that we need to stop the boats but the legislation to do this must be assuredly fit for purpose.
To that end, spoke with Sir Bill Cash, who confirmed his star chamber team are already analysing the Rwanda bill, in detail.
This may still take a few days to complete but he was confident their findings will be available, at the very latest, prior to the second reading debate on Tuesday.
The New Conservatives and Common Sense groups are also interested in the verdict, PA says.
Updated
When Rishi Sunak became Conservative leader, he was significantly more popular with the public than his party. A big question in politics was whether he would drag his party up (with people taking a more positive view of the Tories, because Sunak was leading them), or whether the opposite would happen.
Now the answer is clear. As new polling from Ipsos confirms, being Tory leader seems to have had a dire impact on Sunak’s popularity.
Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said:
At the start of the year the prime minister’s personal poll ratings were stronger than his party’s. In January, Rishi Sunak held a net favourability rating of -9 whilst the Conservative party stood at -26. Today Mr Sunak’s stands at -28 and the Conservative party -33. A year of public concern about the cost of living, NHS and immigration now mean Mr Sunak is almost as unpopular as the party he leads as he grapples with how to turn their collective fortunes around in 2024.
🚨 New from @IpsosUK. 2023: The year Rishi Sunak became (almost) as unpopular as his party 🚨
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) December 7, 2023
Net favourability
Jan 2023
Sunak: -9
Conservatives: -26
November 2023
Sunak: -28
Conservatives: -33
Short 🧵https://t.co/olINYzzW2m
New from @IpsosUK. 2023: The year Rishi Sunak became (almost) as unpopular as his party
Net favourability
Jan 2023
Sunak: -9
Conservatives: -26
November 2023
Sunak: -28
Conservatives: -33
Updated
A reader asks:
Do we have a timetable for passage through Lords for Rwanda bill? Surely this is unlikely to get through the Lord’s without amendment?
We don’t even have a timetable for the passage of the bill through the Commons. During business questions this morning Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, said the second reading would take place on Tuesday next week. But she did not say when the remaining stages would be debated, even though she announced provisional business in the Commons up until Tuesday 19 December, when the Christmas recess starts.
It is possible the bill could clear the Commons before 19 December; it is not unusual for the government to schedule new debates at short notice.
But in the Lords there is no mechanism by which the government can force legislation through quickly against the wishes of the opposition. Peers will probably want to spend a few weeks on it. And, you’re right – it is unlikely to pass without amendments.
Updated
Humza Yousaf says UK government's plan to slash immigration marks 'real dark day' for Britain
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has described the UK government’s plan to slash immigration as marking a “real dark day” for Britain.
Speaking at first minister’s questions, in response to a question from the SNP MSP Clare Haughey specifically about the plan to stop people on care worker visas bringing dependants with them, Yousaf said:
It’s a real dark day for the UK, a country that once welcomed immigrants, including my grandfather, to the country. In fact, begged him to come and others to come to work in their factories, to drive buses, due to the labour shortages that were seen at that time.
As PA Media reports, Yousaf’s grandfather came to Scotland from Pakistan in the 1960s to work in a sewing machine factory in Clydebank.
Yousaf argued that Labour and Conservative governments were both responsible over the years for making immigration rules increasingly restrictive. He said:
What successive UK governments have done – Labour and Conservatives – is they have, bit by bit, dismantled our immigration and indeed our asylum processes.
On immigration, the latest announcements mean that we’re asking – the UK government is asking – migrants to come here to look after our own family members but doing so by abandoning their own family members back home.
On asylum, the UK government has virtually eliminated any practical legal route for those that are fleeing war or persecution.
The policies of the UK government in this respect are not only morally repugnant, but they are economically illiterate.
The SNP, the Scottish government, values migration. We value the importance of it to our social fabric but also to our economy, and let me say unequivocally that in Scotland, the Scottish government will always say that we are proud of the benefits that migrants bring to this country, and we are proud that they have chosen Scotland to be their home.
Updated
The Institute for Government thinktank has published an analysis of the Rwanda bill by Sir Jonathan Jones, a former head of the government’s legal department. He confirms Rishi Sunak’s argument that the bill would stop most, but not all, legal challenges to a deportation order to Rwanda. Jones says:
Clause 4 does to a limited extent allow claims on the grounds that Rwanda is not a safe country for a particular person “based on compelling evidence relating specifically to the person’s individual circumstances” (rather than grounds that Rwanda is not a safe country in general). However such claims are excluded if they relate to the risk of someone being subject to refoulement from Rwanda to another country – in other words they must relate to the safety of conditions for the individual in Rwanda itself.
What the bill cannot do is prevent claimants going to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg if they have been unable to enforce their rights in the domestic courts. The Strasbourg court would not be bound by the UK-Rwanda treaty or by the UK legislation. It would perform its own assessment, on the latest evidence available, as to whether there was a breach of the ECHR.
Updated
The One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs, which represents “moderates” in the party who support staying party to the European convention on human rights, are expressing doubts about the Rwanda bill, Kevin Schofield from HuffPost UK reports.
Hearing the One Nation Caucus of moderate Tory MPs are “nervous” about the Rwanda legislation, in the wake of Sunak’s speech this morning and now they’ve had more time to look at.
— Kevin Schofield (@KevinASchofield) December 7, 2023
“Concerns are being raised” about giving ministers the ability to declare Rwanda safe, I’m told.
Updated
At Rishi Sunak’s press conference he was asked by Christopher Hope, from GB News, about a GB News report claiming the Rwanda policy is treated as a joke by people smugglers. (See 11.35am.) In its report GB News quoted a source “with intimate knowledge of the smuggling gangs in the camps of northern France” who told the channel:
Mention Rwanda now and people here in the camps just laugh. It’s become the butt of jokes around here.
The migrants are well aware of the difficulties the UK government is having around this policy.
The threat hasn’t put anyone off from coming here, because no one thinks for a second they’d be heading to Rwanda if they make it to the UK.
Updated
Frazer announces review of BBC licence fee, considering alternative funding models, as it rises by £10.50 to £169.50
The BBC licence fee will rise by £10.50 to £169.50 a year, the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, has confirmed.
In a statement to MPs, Frazer also announced a review of the licence fee that will consider alternative funding models. In a news release the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said:
The review, supported by a panel of independent experts soon to be announced from across the broadcasting sector and wider business world, will assess a range of options for funding the BBC. It will look at how alternative models could help secure the broadcaster’s long-term sustainability amid an evolving media landscape, increased competition and changing audience behaviour, while reducing the burden on licence fee payers.
Under its terms of reference, the review will consider various issues including “whether the BBC should provide more services to audiences on a fully commercial basis, and what those services could be” and “how the BBC could transition to any new funding model”.
The names of those leading the review have not yet been announced.
Updated
Sunak's press conference - summary and analysis
This was the second press conference Rishi Sunak has held at No 10 within a month about the Rwanda deportation policy. The first came on the day of the supreme court judgment saying the policy was unlawful and on that occasion he sought to win over Tory MPs by promising “emergency legislation” (even though the emergency bill he was proposing was not the same as what they wanted). Today the bill is out, and Sunak stressed that it included “notwithstanding clauses”, even though they are not the hardcore “notwithstanding clauses” sought by rightwingers. Sunak’s will disapply parts of the Human Rights Act; Suella Braverman and her allies want clauses that will disapply all or parts of the European convention on human rights.
Sunak was eloquent today when arguing that his bill is strong enough to ensure deportation flights to Rwanda will take off. But it is not yet clear whether his legal arguments are as robust as his rhetoric, and today he sounded more uncertain and defensive than he did when going over this ground last month. He said four times that he was “confident” his plan would work, but the more he said it, the less confident he sounded. And perhaps the biggest takeaway of all came from the questions; the Daily Mail, the Sun and the GB News, which are normally quite favourable to the Tories, all asked sceptical or hostile questions.
Here is the text of Sunak’s opening statement. And here are the main points from the statement and the Q&A.
Sunak claimed the new bill will close down the vast majority of the legal routes used by asylum seekers who have challenged decisions to deport them to Rwanda. He said:
Let me just go through the ways individual illegal migrants try and stay.
Claiming asylum – that’s now blocked.
Abuse of our Modern Slavery rules – blocked.
The idea that Rwanda isn’t safe – blocked.
The risk of being sent on to some other country - blocked.
And spurious Human Rights claims – you’d better believe we’ve blocked those too … because we’re completely disapplying all the relevant sections of the Human Rights Act.
And not only have we blocked all these ways illegal migrants will try and stay.
We’ve also blocked their ability to try and stay by bringing a Judicial Review on any of those grounds.
That means that this bill blocks every single reason that has ever been used to prevent flights to Rwanda from taking off.
The only, extremely narrow exception will be if you can prove with credible and compelling evidence …. that you specifically have a real and imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm …
I am telling you now, we have set the bar so high that it will be vanishingly rare for anyone to meet it.
He said the UK was willing to ignore injunctions from the European court of human right seeking to block deportation flights. He said:
I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights.
If the Strasbourg court chooses to intervene against the express wishes of our sovereign parliament, I will do what is necessary to get flights off.
And today’s new law already makes clear that the decision on whether to comply with interim measures issued by the European court is a decision for British government ministers – and British government ministers alone.
Ignoring injunctions from the ECtHR is not the same as ignoring all judgments from it.
He claimed that there was only “an inch” between his stance and that of his Tory critics who want a tougher bill. And if he agreed to their demand (for a bill allowing the UK to ignore the ECHR), Rwanda would pull out, he said.
For the people who say ‘you should do something different’, the difference between them and me is an inch, given everything that we have closed. We’re talking about an inch.
That inch by the way is the difference between the Rwandans participating in this scheme and not.
He challenged Labour to back the bill. (See 11.18am.)
He said next week’s second reading vote on the bill would not be a confidence matter. (See 12.12pm.)
He ducked a question about whether voters would be entitled not to trust him if Rwanda flights were still not taking place by the time of the next election.
Sunak rules out treating Commons vote on Rwanda bill as matter of confidence
At his press conference Rishi Sunak was asked if No 10 would treat next week’s vote on the Rwanda bill as a confidence vote. His answer was not entirely clear, but No 10 has confirmed that he said no.
Treating the second reading vote as a confidence vote would mean that any Tory MP who voted against, or perhaps even abstained, would lose the whip, and could be banned from standing as a candidate at the next election.
That might seem like an attractive option for No 10, but designating a division as a confidence vote can easily backfire because MPs view it as an extreme measure, and an act of desperation. Liz Truss resigned as PM the day after a bungled threat to treat a vote on fracking as a confidence issue.
This is from ITV’s Paul Brand.
Asked whether they think the right of the party are willing to push Rishi Sunak to the brink, one Conservative MP replies, “Yes. They’re lunatics.”
Asked whether they think the right of the party are willing to push Rishi Sunak to the brink, one Conservative MP replies, "Yes. They're lunatics."
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) December 7, 2023
Russian spies targeting UK MPs and media with ‘cyber interference’
The Russian Federal Security Service has used “cyber interference” to target MPs, journalists and others as part of attempts to “meddle in British politics”, the Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty has told the Commons. He made the announcement in a statement taking place around the same time as Rishi Sunak’s press conference. Rowena Mason has the story.
MPs to debate second reading of Rwanda bill on Tuesday next week, Penny Mordaunt says
Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, has told MPs that the second reading of the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill will take place on Tuesday next week.
Attorney general Victoria Prentis rejects call to publish her legal advice to government over Rwanda bill
Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, has rejected calls from Labour to publish her legal advice to the government about the legality of the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill yesterday.
In response to a question in the Commons from Emily Thornberry, her Labour opposite number, Prentis said that she was not allowed to discuss her legal advice to the government and she said the government only published a summary of its legal advice “in very, very rare circumstances”, such as ahead of military action.
She also said the section 19 (1) (b) statement on the face of the bill, from James Cleverly, the home secretary, saying he was unable to say the bill was compatible with the European convention on human rights, was not unprecedented.
Asked if she was comfortable with the bill, Prentis said:
I take very seriously my obligations to encourage government to act in a lawful manner and to make sure that government is acting in a lawful manner both on the international and the domestic front.
And when Andy Slaughter (Lab) asked if there was any significance in the fact that her name is not included on the face of the bill in the lists of minister backing it (Michael Tomlinson, solicitor general until this morning, is named instead), Prentis replied:
I can’t give the details of the legal advice that I have been giving the government – or whether or not I have been giving such advice – from this despatch box, and that remains the case.
I remain very comfortable in my role and I will hope that I remain in this role to give the government legal advice for a long time to come.
Prentis was reportedly firmly opposed to the government publishing an even tougher version of the bill that would have allowed the UK to ignore parts of the European convention on human rights. Some previous attorneys general, such as Suella Braverman, have been more relaxed about challenging international law.
Updated
Q: [From GB News] We have been to Calais and found people smugglers are laughing at the UK’s Rwanda policy. Are they entitled to do that?
Sunak says, look at the results. Crossings this year are down by a third. And many people have been arrested. He says 22,000 people have been returned. So what they are doing is making a difference, he says.
Cooperation with the French is working, he says.
He talks about barriers being erected in French rivers stopping boats getting to the coast.
He is confident that this will work, he says. And it is the only approach that would work, he says.
He repeats his call for Labour to support the bill.
And that’s it.
Q: [From the Sun] If no flight leaves to Rwanda before the election, are voters entitled to say they no longer trust you?
Sunak gives a list of areas where he claims he has delivered. The British people will get to decide. He is confident that the British people will see that, he says.
Updated
Sunak claims he and Tory critics of bill only 'inch' apart - but that if he makes it even tougher, Rwanda will pull out
Q: [From the Daily Mail] Jenrick said this bill was a triumph of hope over experience. He is right, isn’t he? It is not going to work.
Sunak does not accept that. He says he is delivering on immigration. He is “entirely confident” about this, he says. He has worked through it with multiple lawyers. This is the toughest legislation on this decision.
He stresses, again, that the bill contains a notwithstanding clause.
He claims the bill blocks every avenue used in the past to obstruct deportations.
He says the difference between him and his Tory critics is only “an inch”. But that inch of difference is what ensures Rwanda still backs the scheme, he says.
Updated
Sunak claims if Labour oppose Rwanda bill, that means they don't 'get values of British people'
Q: You have lost control of your party. Will you call an election if you lose these votes?
Sunak says small-boat numbers are down by a third. Legal enforcement raids are up. Thousands of migrants in the country illegally have had their bank accounts closed. What is happening is “ridiculous”, he says. He says he wants to finish the job. This is a top priority for the country. He is focused on delivering.
Q: What if you lose?
Sunak says he is confident that he can win the vote. He wants this bill on the statute book in record time.
He claims his track record shows he can get things done.
If Labour “get the values of the British people”, they will vote for the bill, he says.
Updated
Q: Will you treat next week’s vote as a confidence vote?
Sunak says the real question about next week is for the Labour party. He says he has a plan. But Labour doesn’t have one. The real question is, what will Labour do.
(Pat McFadden, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, confirmed this morning that Labour will oppose it.)
Updated
Sunak is now taking questions.
Q: Are you saying to your MPs back me or sack me?
Sunak says he is saying to the country his patience is running thin. They have to end the legal merry-go-round and get deportations to Rwanda up and running.
What is happening is “patently unfair”, he says.
Sunak says Rwanda bill will make prospect of courts blocking any deportation decision 'vanishingly rare'
Sunak says he did not agree with the supreme court’s judgment, but he respects it.
The bill will address the concerns it has. The supreme court was commenting on conditions in Rwanda 18 months ago, he says.
The bill includes notwithstanding clauses. This means people will not be able to use domestic law to challenge decisions to deport them.
He lists a series of reasons migrants might try to use to challenge a decision to deport them. They have all been blocked.
He says the only challenge that might be allowed would be if someone could prove, with credible evidence, that they were at real risk of harm if they were sent abroad.
He says without this provision, Rwanda would not have agreed to the scheme. And in that case the scheme would have collapsed.
He says this is an “extremely narrow” exception. It means the prospect of a challenge succeeding will be “vanishingly rare”.
(This is the point Chris Heaton-Harris was making this morning – see 10.40am.)
UPDATE: Sunak said:
That means that this bill blocks every single reason that has ever been used to prevent flights to Rwanda from taking off.
The only, extremely narrow exception will be if you can prove with credible and compelling evidence that you specifically have a real and imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm.
We have to recognise that as a matter of law – and if we didn’t, we’d undermine the treaty we’ve just signed with Rwanda.
As the Rwandans themselves have made clear, if we go any further the entire scheme will collapse.
And there’s no point having a bill with nowhere to send people to.
But I am telling you now, we have set the bar so high that it will be vanishingly rare for anyone to meet it.
Updated
Rishi Sunak holds press conference
Rishi Sunak says he is holding this press conference to explain why the government is publishing its Rwanda bill.
He says he is the child of immigrants. He understands why people want to come to the UK.
But his parents came here legally, he says.
If people are allowed to come to the UK illegally, that will destroy people’s trust in the system, he says.
Michael Tomlinson appointed to replace Jenrick as immigration minister
Michael Tomlinson has been appointed to replace Robert Jenrick as immigration minister, No 10 has announced. Tomlinson was the solicitor general. He will be a minister of state at the Home Office, with the official title of “minister for illegal migration”, and he will attend cabinet.
Tom Pursglove, who was the minister for disabled people, has also been moved to the Home Office, as “minister for legal migration and delivery”.
And Robert Courts has been promoted to replace Tomlinson as solicitor general. He was the chair of the defence committee, but will have to stand down.
These appointments are likely to go down well with the Tory right. Tomlinson is a former deputy chair of the European Research Group, and Pursglove is a vocal Brexiter.
Updated
Legal challenges against deportation under Rwanda bill only possible in 'vanishingly small' number of cases, minister claims
In her Today programme interview this morning Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, said she was opposed to the Rwanda bill published yesterday because it would allow asylum seekers to use the courts to challenge the decision to remove them. She said the bill would allow “a whole raft of individual claims to be made by people that we might seek to remove to Rwanda” and that these legal challenges could take months or years.
But in his interviews this morning Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, claimed the bill would only allow legal challenges in rare circumstances. He told GB News:
You’ll be really having to go some way to be able to prove that you’ll be in immediate harm or danger if you went to Rwanda to be pulled off a flight. I think the chances of that are … vanishingly small.
And on BBC Breakfast, Heaton-Harris said these legal challenges would only happen in a “very, very small number of matters, like misidentification”.
Updated
In his LBC interview this morning Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, played down the significance of Robert Jenrick’s resignation last night as immigration minister over the Rwanda bill. He said:
I don’t think it’s as big a story as is being made.
I generally don’t like anybody resigning from my party … [but] when I was Boris’s chief whip pretty much everybody did, so maybe I have a sense of scale and proportion that others don’t.
Sunak to hold press conference at 11am
Rishi Sunak will be holding a press conference at 11am, No 10 has announced.
We’ll have a live stream of it in the blog shortly before 11. You may need to refresh the page to see it.
Updated
Rishi Sunak to give evidence to Covid inquiry for most of Monday, inquiry says
Rishi Sunak will give evidence to the Covid inquiry for most of Monday, the inquiry has announced. He is scheduled to appear in the morning, starting at 10.30am, and again for a session in the afternoon. He will be asked about his time as chancellor during the pandemic, and he is the last witness scheduled to appear before the inquiry hears closing statements from lawyers later next week at the end of module two, which has been looking at “decision making and political governance”.
With so much happening today, I’ll be covering the crisis in the Conservative party, and other Westminster political stories, here. And my colleague Sammy Gecsoyler will be covering Boris Johnson at the Covid inquiry on a separate live blog here.
Updated
Suella Braverman rejects claim she is plotting to bring down Rishi Sunak
Here are the main lines from Suella Braverman’s interview on the Today programme.
Braverman, the former home secretary, claimed that she was not actively plotting to bring down Rishi Sunak as Tory leader and she claimed she hoped he would lead the party into the next election. (See 9.14am.) She said:
I want the prime minister to succeed in stopping the boats. He said he would do whatever it takes. I’m telling him there is a way to succeed in stopping the boats and fulfilling that promise.
If we do it, if he does it as prime minister, he will be able to lead us into the next election telling the people we have succeeded on this very important pledge.
She rejected claims the Conservative party had a “death wish”.
She said the Rwanda bill published yesterday would not work. She explained:
There are elements that should be welcomed in this new bill that the prime minister has presented.
But taken as a whole and looking at the reality of the challenges that are involved in detaining people, removing people and getting them to Rwanda – this is a very litigious field and there are lots of legal frameworks that apply – the reality is and the sorry truth is that it won’t work and it will not stop the boats.
She said the bill needed to be changed “to totally exclude international law – the refugee convention, other broader avenues of legal challenge”.
She defended her habit of making controversial and provocative statements. She said:
The truth is that when I served as home secretary I sought to be honest; honest to the British people, honest for the British people, and sometimes honesty is uncomfortable.
But I’m not going to shy away from telling people how it is and from plain speaking, and if that upsets polite society then I’m sorry about that.
But the point is that we need to be honest, we need to be clear-eyed about the situation right now.
We can’t keep failing the British people. We have made promise after promise [on immigration]. We have put forward plan after plan. They have all failed. And we have now run out of time.
Updated
Kevin Schofield from HuffPost has posted on X the text of Nick Robinson’s “spreading poison” question to Suella Braverman in full.
That Nick Robinson monologue to Suella Braverman was quite something ... pic.twitter.com/8zhjxaNalC
— Kevin Schofield (@KevinASchofield) December 7, 2023
Cabinet minister claims leadership challenge to Sunak ‘highly unlikely’ as Tory crisis escalates
Good morning. Boris Johnson is back at the Covid inquiry later this morning and, although yesterday was tough, today is likely to be even more challenging for him. He is expected to face questions on why he ignored calls from scientists for a second lockdown for weeks, why he repeatedly made comments in public suggesting he would be happy to see old people die if that was necessary to keep the economy open, and why he allowed Partygate.
But if you think Johnson v Hugo Keith KC will be the best example today of a senior Tory giving implausible answers in response to hostile questioning, you probably weren’t listening to Suella Braverman being interviewed by Nick Robinson on the Today programme right now.
Although the two stories are separate, they are not unrelated. Support for the Conservative party crashed as a direct result of Johnson’s leadership, and Partygate, both of which are being investigated by the inquiry. And if the Tories were not 20 points behind in the polls, it is hard to believe that their MPs would be at war with each other with such hostility.
In her Today interview, Braverman’s biggest whopper came when she was asked if she thought Rishi Sunak should remain Conservative leader if he did not change his Rwanda policy. Braverman replied:
No one’s talking about leadership, or changing leadership.
Robinson replied: “That’s nonsense, and you know it’s nonsense.” He said Tory MPs were talking about a leadership challenge, and that Braverman had held meetings to discuss this herself.
But that wasn’t even Robinson’s most hostile intervention. That came when he put it to Braverman that she was “a headline-grabber who does it by spreading poison, even within your own party”. In response, Braverman said she “sought to be honest”, and that honesty involved saying uncomfortable things.
Braverman’s main argument was the one she also made yesterday in her personal statement to the Commons – that the Rwanda plan drawn up by Sunak did not go far enough.
She also denied wanting to bring down Sunak. She claimed that she wanted him to succeed, and that she hoped he would lead the party into the next election.
Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, was also interviewed on LBC this morning. Asked about the prospect of Sunak facing a leadership challenge, he replied:
I think it’s highly unlikely, very unlikely. I’d say vanishingly small.
At this point it is very hard to tell how the Tory crisis will unfold. For Sunak to face a confidence vote, 53 Conservative MPs would have to write to Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, requesting one. This seems unlikely before Christmas, but this time yesterday no one was even talking about this seriously as a potential outcome. Now it is conceivable.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Boris Johnson resumes giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.
10.10am: Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, takes questions in the Commons.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest
Updated
