Politics latest: Rishi Sunak holds press conference as Rwanda bill returns to parliament | Political news

The government had expected the Rwanda bill to be passed by parliament last week, but that did not happen. Parliament will vote for as long as it takes today to get it passed.

So what happened last week?

Monday

The House of Commons voted on seven amendments to the Rwanda Bill passed by the House of Lords.

All seven amendments were rejected by parliamentarians.

They were all defeated by comfortable majorities, and the legislation was returned to the Lords.

Tuesday

The Lords again decided to change the legislation and approved four new amendments.

That sent the bill back to the House of Commons for MPs to vote on.

Wednesday

Following Prime Minister’s Questions, MPs voted on the four Lords amendments to the legislation after about an hour of debate.

All four amendments were rejected by MPs, all by a comfortable margin.

It was expected that the Lords would accept the bill in the form it had been sent by the House of Commons, but…

Wednesday evening

Labor colleagues joined bishops and crossbenchers to pass two new amendments by comfortable majorities.

This means that – to the annoyance of the government – ​​MPs will have to vote on those amendments again.

The Lords maintains its position that the Bill should require an independent commission to declare Rwanda safe (rather than giving the Home Secretary that power), and that those who served in or for the British Armed Forces exemption from deportation.

Because the government had expected the bill to be passed by the Lords on Wednesday, there were not many MPs in Westminster on Thursday.

We expect the debate and votes in the House of Commons to start around 4.30pm, and we’ll bring you the latest news on that when that happens.