Rightwing Tories’ Rwanda demands risks reopening party divisions

A damaging row over Rishi Sunak’s asylum policy has been reignited after ministers announced that the Rwanda bill will return to the Commons next week.

The prime minister came under pressure from rightwing Tory MPs, including Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, to accept amendments that would limit individual challenges by migrants and prevent the European court of human rights from blocking deportation flights to central Africa.

Moderate Conservatives from the 100-strong One Nation group have warned that Sunak will face a revolt if he blocks international law as No 10 appeared to be resisting hard-right pressure.

Tensions emerged after Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader, announced two days of line-by-line scrutiny of the bill in a committee of the full house on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A statement released by a coalition of hard-right groups on Tuesday night said they had drawn up amendments backed by more than 30 MPs that will “finally end the merry-go-round of legal challenges blocking illegal migrants’ removal”.

Jenrick, Sunak’s former ally who resigned as immigration minister in December, said he has seen legal advice that showed the current bill would not work.

“The bill as drafted simply will not work because it doesn’t end the merry-go-round of legal challenges that frustrate removals,” he said. “I’ve seen the legal advice and operational plans where this was painfully apparent.

“That’s why myself and colleagues have tabled a set of amendments that block small boat arrivals making individual claims and prevent rule 39 pyjama injunctions from Strasbourg grounding planes,” he said.

The amendments are designed to close off the vast majority of routes to legal challenges while leaving a few exceptions such as when an asylum seeker is medically unfit to fly, the statement claimed. The amendments are also supposed to block rule 39 injunctions from Strasbourg judges – otherwise known as pyjama junctions – typically used to suspend an expulsion or extradition.

A third amendment is expected to expand the “notwithstanding” clauses in the bill to include international laws, while a fourth is expected to prevent a court issuing a “declaration of incompatibility” for the bill with the European convention on human rights under the Human Rights Act.

MPs expected to support up to four amendments include the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, the former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, leaders of the New Conservatives Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, as well as Simon Clarke, Jake Berry, John Hayes, John Redwood and Mark Francois.

Sunak has been warned by MPs on the left of the party that he should impose the whip to deter people supporting the amendments. A One Nation source said: “We will oppose the amendments and hope the government will whip against them.”

Damian Green, chairman of the One Nation group, told the New Statesman: “The prime minister has got within an inch of what I would regard as acceptable. Almost all our members voted for a second reading with the clear message of ‘thus far and no further’ and ‘don’t take that extra inch’, which some colleagues on the right of the party want us to do.”

Green’s group has two red lines: that the legislation must not block all avenues of appeal by people seeking asylum; and it must not break international treaties including the European convention on human rights, the UN refugee convention, and the convention against torture.

Home Office sources said that the home secretary, James Cleverly, the Home Office minister Michael Tomlinson and officials have begun meeting Tory MPs to reassure them over the bill, but are still waiting to study the text of the hard-right amendments.

Ministers are hoping for a rerun of the rightwing rebellion in December when the legislation comfortably passed its first Commons hurdle with a majority of 44. The prime minister’s spokesperson said the government “will continue listening to views on all sides”, but inferred was that room for manoeuvre is limited.

“The prime minister’s view is that the bill has been carefully drafted,” he said. “We are keen to listen further, but need to ensure that the bill maintains both the deterrent effect and functions in such a way that will retain the support of the Rwandan government. Those are the parameters within which we are working, but within that we are very keen to hear from parliamentarians.”

In the Commons, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, sought to exploit Tory divisions and called for the government to come clean over the full costs of the scheme, which she claimed would be nearly £400m over five years.

“The prime minister is still going ahead with a scheme he doesn’t believe in, doesn’t think will work, knows is extortionately expensive because he is too weak not to,” she told MPs. “Because, in the end, the only deterrence it appears the prime minister actually believes in is deterring his backbenchers from getting rid of him … and yet the taxpayer is paying the price.”