The UK's net zero minister Graham Stuart was flying home from the COP28 summit in Dubai as Rishi Sunak scrambled to avoid losing a crunch vote on his Rwanda plan.
Mr Stuart, whose brief also covers the energy sector, was then to do return to the United Arab Emirates to carry on the talks on tackling global warming.
The return trip is some 6,800 miles.
The decision to summon back Mr Stuart highlights how tight the vote could be on Tuesday evening on the Government's controversial Rwanda bill.
Having been dragged back from the COP28 summit, where crunch talks were taking place, he tweeted shortly after 4pm UK time: "Together we are pushing for a step change in ambition that keeps 1.5 degrees in reach. "Yesterday’s draft does not go far enough, and I will only agree to a statement that agrees to a phase out of unabated fossil fuels to meet our climate goals."At Westminster, Right-wing Tory MPs are threatening to abstain or vote against it as they believe the Rwanda legislation needs to be strengthened.
But moderate Conservative MPs have warned that while they will back it at Second Reading they will oppose any amendments that would risk the UK breaching the rule of law and its international obligations.
In Dubai, the COP28 climate summit was hurtling towards overtime on Tuesday, with negotiators awaiting a new draft deal after many countries criticised a previous version as too weak because it omitted a "phase-out" of fossil fuels.
COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi said the draft, released on Monday after nearly two weeks of talks, was meant to draw parties into the open and "spark conversations" as they aim to agree on a final deal by the summit's end.
"By releasing our first draft of the text, we got parties to come to us quickly with those red lines," he told reporters.
Negotiators from the nearly 200 countries at the Dubai summit are attempting to agree on a global plan of action to limit climate change fast enough to avert more disastrous flooding, fatal heat and irreversible changes to the world's ecosystems.
Mr Al Suwaidi said the COP28 presidency, currently held by the United Arab Emirates, was aiming for a "historic" result that included mentioning fossil fuels - but that it was up to countries to agree.
Deals at UN climate summits must be passed by consensus. Then it is up to individual countries to deliver on the deal, through national policies and investments.
Experts have warned that a failure to strike a meaningful deal with deliver a fresh blow to hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
