UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has suffered his heaviest loss in the House of Lords after the archbishop of Canterbury and former Conservative ministers joined forces with the opposition to push through five amendments to the Rwanda deportation bill.
The legislation that intends to clear the way to send asylum seekers on a one-way flight to Kigali will have to return to the Commons due to a series of setbacks for the government, most passed by unusually large margins of about 100 votes.
Sunak's Rwanda Bill Suffers Defeat
The prime minister has previously warned the unelected chamber to prevent the "will of the people" from being frustrated by hampering the passage of his safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill, which MPs have approved.
Sunak has made "stopping the boats" a major leadership commitment. However, he has seen several obstacles, such as the bill facing legal challenges.
According to official auditors last week, it would cost $32,130 to send each of the 300 migrants to Rwanda.
The draft legislation and a treaty with Rwanda intend to avert further legal challenges to the deportation plan, which was put on hold after the supreme court ruled the plan was unlawful.
Furthermore, compelling judges to regard the east African country as safe would give ministers the authority to disregard emergency orders. It has been warned that the law would violate international law and is "fundamentally incompatible" with the UK's human rights obligations.
However, Downing Street has said the government is still planning to send flights to Rwanda "in the spring."
On Monday night, peers approved five amendments to the bill, including ensuring it adheres to the rule of law and that parliament cannot declare Rwanda safe until the treaty with its promised protections is completely implemented. The Lords also backed a move that would allow the presumption the country is a secure haven to be challenged in the courts.
The Most Rev. Justin Welby and prominent Conservatives Ken Clarke, Lord Deben, and Viscount Hailsham, who had previously served in the Cabinet, were among those who voted against the government.
The magnitude of the losses suggests the possibility of an extended brawl between the Commons and Lords during "ping-pong," in which legislation is battled between the two houses until an agreement is achieved.
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Peers Criticize Rwanda Bill
David Anderson, an independent crossbencher and attorney, argued that the provision in the bill requiring Rwanda to be seen as safe "takes us for fools."
Anderson proposed an amendment allowing the presumption to be challenged in court. He said that if Rwanda is safe, as the government would have them declare, it has nothing to fear from such scrutiny.
"Yet we are invited to adopt a fiction, to wrap it in the cloak of parliamentary sovereignty and to grant it permanent immunity from challenge. To tell an untruth and call it truth. Why would we go along with that?" he continued.
According to Welby, international human rights legislation was created as a "fallback" and "stop" on governments in the wake of the atrocities carried out by Nazi Germany. The archbishop has cleared that they are not in any situation remotely like that.
He claimed that the government is not doing something on the scale of what they saw at that stage but noted that the government is challenging the right of international law to constrain their actions.
Former chancellor Clarke hoped that if the law were passed, it would be challenged in court. He said that he cannot recall a precedent in his time where a government of any complexion have produced a bill which asserts a matter of fact.
Later, Home Office minister Andrew Sharpe addressed worries regarding the mental health care that asylum seekers would receive in Rwanda, saying that it would be far in the best interests and mental health interests of those seeking asylum and who are victims to seek asylum in the first safe country they came to.
The government could face further defeats on Wednesday when the bill returns before the Lords.
Furthermore, the UK and France intend to establish a new customs partnership to disrupt the supply chain of small boats in the Channel.
The Calais Group of northern European nations convened in Brussels Monday with Home Secretary James Cleverly. They plan to disrupt the supply chain for boat parts, which includes building supplies and engines.
