Rishi Sunak’s pledge to begin flying asylum seekers to Rwanda by spring looked more distant than ever after members of the House of Lords approved a timetable that would not see the bill passed before late March.
On Thursday the prime minister urged peers to pass his asylum bill as soon as possible after its approval by the Commons on Wednesday night, telling them that it reflected the “will of the people”.
By Thursday evening, however, his comments appeared to have backfired, with members of the Lords calling them “bizarre”, “vacuous” and “weird” and then approving a two-month timetable to scrutinise the bill.
Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, told the Guardian: “Sunak’s press conference was bizarre. I don’t think he has a clue how the Lords works. We will stick to our normal processes for approving this bill.”
Alex Carlile, a crossbench peer and lawyer, said: “The prime minister’s press conference was vacuous and banal, and he repeated the same statement around 20 times. It has caused some annoyance in the Lords.”
Jonathan Marland, a Conservative peer, suggested there would be a protracted debate in the Lords over the details of the bill.
“What are the protections [the Rwandans] have in the courts there?” he said to GB News. “What is the legal procedure when they get there? What rights of appeal do they have?
“All those sorts of things, which the government has volunteered already that are going to be fundamental to this bill, but have done nothing about it.”
He added: “That is the job of the Lords, to ensure that the loose ends of the bill are tightened up, so I suspect there’ll be a lot of debate around that.”
Senior government figures celebrated on Wednesday night after Sunak faced down rebel MPs to pass his Rwanda bill, which deems the central African country safe for refugees and allows ministers to ignore temporary injunctions from Strasbourg.
On Thursday morning the prime minister sought to capitalise on the victory with a press conference in Downing Street in which he called on members of the House of Lords to pass it as quickly as the Commons had.
Sunak said: “The question is, will the House of Lords understand the country’s frustration, see the will of the elected house and move as quickly as we have to support this legislation so we can get it on the statute books and then get flights up and running?”
Within hours, however, peers had agreed a timetable that will see the bill get a second reading on 29 January, followed by three days of debate in the committee stage on 12, 14 and 19 February.
During that process, peers are likely to put forward a range of amendments, many of which are likely to try to stop ministers ignoring rulings from domestic or international courts.
They are then likely to hold a final vote on the bill on 12 March, after which the Commons will have a chance to vote on any Lords amendments. The subsequent process of shuttling the bill between the Lords and Commons in search of a joint agreement, known as “ping-pong”, could take several weeks more.
Sunak is preparing to order his MPs to knock down any Lords amendments, according to government sources.
“We have plotted a path through this that both wings of the party can just about live with,” one said. “We’re not going to start making any significant changes that may tip the balance one way or the other.”
If Sunak survives further Commons rebellions, the bill should pass unamended given that Labour has said it will not block it in the Lords.
Lady Smith said: “The unelected house telling the elected house: you’ve passed this, but we’re not going to – that would be quite a big constitutional moment.”
At that point, the government would be running out of time to get a flight in the air to meet Sunak’s promise of the scheme running by spring.
Downing Street recommitted to that timetable on Thursday. A spokesperson said: “We want to get flights off the ground and the partnership up and running so it can have a deterrent effect from the spring.”
While Sunak puts public pressure on the Lords to pass the bill, Home Office ministers are trying to find about 6,000 asylum seekers they cannot locate, they admitted on Thursday.
In a joint letter to Diana Johnson, the chair of the home affairs select committee, the immigration ministers Michael Tomlinson and Tom Pursglove said they had updated their files and found that 5,598 people were in the UK and not in contact with the Home Office. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the admission was “staggering”.
Some Tories are worried that any legislative success with the bill will be overshadowed by administrative problems with the asylum system. Several have also warned that constantly focusing on immigration is only likely to boost the prospects of Reform UK, the rightwing party co-founded by Nigel Farage.
“I wish they’d just shut up about it. It’s not a priority for most people,” said one senior Tory. “All they’ve done is show how divided the party is and given the public a daily reminder of that.”
