Downing Street has ruled out a proposal by rightwing Conservatives to override international law to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda, prompting threats that rebel MPs will simply seek to amend planned legislation.
Rishi Sunak has promised to introduce a bill to parliament to get around Wednesday’s supreme court ruling that flights to Rwanda could not take place because of the risk that people could be wrongly returned to their home countries.
With this not due to be published until the week after next, Sunak has come under intense pressure to make sure any challenges based on the European convention on human rights (ECHR) or refugee convention are blocked using a legal mechanism known as notwithstanding clauses, which would direct British courts to ignore certain rulings.
Suella Braverman, sacked by Sunak as home secretary on Monday, used a newspaper article to urge the prime minister to take this approach, but No 10 discounted the idea on Friday, saying it risked the bill becoming mired in delays.
In response, a source representing MPs on the right of the party said No 10 would simply face efforts to change the bill: “We wish them well with the amendments.”
Sunak’s spokesperson said Downing Street was devising “a targeted, focused response to the issues that were raised by the supreme court”.
She said: “Obviously, we have been working and preparing for outcomes for some time, and will now finalise legislation in the light of the specific judgment on Wednesday, but we think that it’s right to take this targeted approach, and that is the swiftest way to get flights off the ground.
“We’re mindful that a broader, more complex approach does come with the potential for this to take longer.”
In a brief TV clip, Sunak did not rule out the idea of calling a snap general election if the law was delayed, for example in the Lords, saying Labour should “work with us and support this bill so we can get it through as quickly as possible”.
But speaking to LBC, Keir Starmer said the idea of passing a law to overturn a verdict of the supreme court showed the Conservatives had lost touch with their core values, as Labour had done under Jeremy Corbyn.
“That is a million miles from where the law and order Conservative party used to be,” the Labour leader said. “And that’s why I think many voters now feel that the Conservative party that they have supported over many years, voted for many years, may even have been associated with over many years, has drifted away from them.”
Damian Green, a leading member of the One Nation group of centrist Tories, who was deputy PM under Theresa May, also said use of notwithstanding clauses would be unacceptable.
“This is the most unconservative proposal I’ve ever heard,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “You know conservatives believe in a democratic country, run by the rule of law. Dictators like Xi [Jinping] and [Vladimir] Putin would prefer to have the state completely untrammelled by any law.”
Green added: “Defending the principle that governments have to obey the law is really important for conservatives, perhaps particularly at times of heightened political change.”
Braverman’s article in the Daily Telegraph set out a five-point plan she argued would make sure flights would leave by spring, Sunak’s target, and help reduce the numbers of asylum seekers arriving unofficially in the UK on small boats across the Channel.
As well as using notwithstanding clauses in the law, she said the UK should work more closely with Rwanda to guarantee the treatment of asylum seekers, that those who arrive on boats should be detained and deported within days, and finally that parliament should sit over Christmas to pass the new laws.
Sunak’s spokesperson did not rule out MPs sitting over Christmas, while stressing this was a matter for Commons authorities: “We’re prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure that we can get this in place and get flights off the ground.”
Sir David Normington, a former permanent secretary at the Home Office, said Braverman’s latest ideas on how to revive the Rwanda plan were unworkable.
“One of the things we keep hearing, and this is Suella Braverman’s latest idea, is that we should remove all appeals, that we should close off all routes,” he said on Friday. “I really don’t think that that is possible. I think in the end, the supreme court wouldn’t allow that.”
