Colleagues will be forced to abandon their insincere whining about the Rwanda bill. But then the battle will just move from Westminster to the airports, writes DOMINIC LAWSON

By Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail

00:41 April 22, 2024, updated 00:54 April 22, 2024

Long after sensible readers of this newspaper have been tucked into bed, MPs and colleagues will conclude a series of high-stakes ‘parliamentary ping-pong’ late tonight, or even into the early hours of tomorrow morning.

This is the term used for the back and forth when the House of Lords repeatedly rejects or changes legislation passed by the House of Commons. But convention dictates that the Lords must ultimately recognize that the will of the elected House must prevail.

In this case, the ball is ping-ponging back and forth between the two Houses on the security of Rwanda (asylum and immigration law).

After the government’s move – to subject anyone crossing the Channel illegally to removal to Rwanda – was again beaten back in the Lords last week, the Prime Minister said he would ‘accept no further delay’ and warned that Parliament ‘must sit down’. there and vote until it’s done’.

A member of the government told the Mail that colleagues should ‘bring their sleeping bags’ today if they plan to brave the House of Commons again.

One of the two remaining Lords amendments seems quite reasonable at first glance.

Backed by a number of former soldiers and ex-defence ministers in the Lords, it would exempt from deportation to Rwanda all Afghans who arrived in ‘the little boats’ and had served alongside British forces in that ill-fated military campaign.

But a number of schemes already exist, most notably the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, which gives those who have assisted our troops (e.g. interpreters) the right to move to Britain, together with ‘a partner, dependent children as well as additional family members’. deemed suitable’.

By the end of last year, the number of Afghans legally moved here through these schemes was almost 28,000.

There will undoubtedly be more people who qualify for this. It is possible that some were rejected when they should not have been. The point, however, is that there is already a safe and legal route for such Afghans and their families – who are indeed in danger from the Taliban government because of their work with the British military – to settle here.

And the refusal of many Labor and crossbench colleagues to accept this argument calls into question the sincerity of those same people when they argue that the answer to the small boat crisis is, as the Refugee Council repeatedly insists, ‘expanding safe and legal routes’. . That is exactly what is being offered to the Afghans who have worked with our forces. And if there are shortcomings in its implementation, this must be addressed at the source, and not through some form of human trafficking.

There is a second point against the apparently small amendment being tabled (again) in the Lords this evening. If, as the government intends, the plan deters the human smugglers’ business model, it should be clear that there will be absolutely no exceptions: that anyone who tries to get here through such illegal means will face deportation to Rwanda. . The policy only has a chance of working if it is seen that there are no loopholes in the law.

The question is whether, if a few flights take place in the summer, the Rwanda plan will really, as Rishi Sunak somewhat brashly promised, ‘hold the boats back’. But it is notable that a number of European countries – because this is far from just a problem here in Britain – are considering similar plans. They also see the need for such a deterrent.

It is not only from people like the Refugee Council that Rwanda policy is receiving harsh criticism. The Reform Party UK, which on the other hand believes that the Conservatives have been far too soft on this issue, also denounces this.

Last week during BBC Question Time, the party’s leader, Richard Tice, said that the Rwanda policy, even if passed in its entirety by the legislature, would be completely ineffective.

He argued that we should do ‘what Australia did ten years ago’: ‘turn back’ the boats full of migrants heading their way. This policy was actually called ‘Stop the Boats’, which was copied word for word by the Conservatives to describe their Rwanda plan.

And Australian policy was very effective in deterring the people smuggling operation. When she was Home Secretary, Priti Patel had even tried to emulate the Australian method. But it failed for several good reasons.

First, it ran into its counterpart in Paris, Gerald Darmanin, who wrote on what was then called Twitter (for the whole world to notice): ‘France will not accept any practice that is contrary to the law of the sea… I have made it. clearly for my counterpart.”

It was not just the French government that took the initiative. Our own Royal Navy outright refused to conduct any ‘turn-round’ operation; and the idea was even denounced by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution – not an organization that any sane government would go to war with.

Tice blithely claimed that such ‘turn-arounds’ would be ‘legal under international law’, but he would – in the totally unthinkable circumstance of him becoming Prime Minister – find himself on the other side of the Royal Navy and the RNLI on this point to stand. .

There is a very significant difference between the Australian situation and that in the Channel. The Aussies had to deal with large ships crossing hundreds of miles of ocean. They can be safely sent to detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

But the ‘boats’ that come here across the Channel are thin rubber boats. A jab from a large naval ship probably wouldn’t turn the thing over, with consequences that are all too easy to imagine. That was why our own army considered such sea maneuvers ‘inappropriate’ under these circumstances.

The Rwanda plan was initiated when Priti Patel was Home Secretary precisely because she – and then Prime Minister Boris Johnson – were forced to abandon the idea of ​​imitating Australia’s ‘stop the boats’ policy.

So after the Lords are finally forced to concede to the House of Commons in the wee hours – and I imagine many of the older peers will also be struggling with their waterworks as the hours pass in the voting lobbies – there will finally be a chance to find out whether the Rwanda plan really proves to be the deterrent Rishi Sunak claims it is.

Because the next hurdle would be finding companies willing to fly the deportees to Rwanda, given the controversy and possibly even violence that could accompany it.

Airlines aren’t exactly lining up for this business. Even RwandAir, the country’s national airline, is among those companies that are said to have rejected the idea of ​​participating.

In short, the battle will soon move from the Palace of Westminster to the airports. Fasten your seat belts: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.