This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
The parliamentary “ping-pong” over the Government’s controversial Rwanda scheme continued to drag on this week after the Commons batted back amendments made by the Lords that would have built-in protections for victims of modern slavery and ensured that there was “due regard” for domestic and international law. What were once basic tenets of our legal framework are now described as “ridiculous” by MPs such as Sir Bill Cash, while other members from the same party argued that blocking the bill serves only to frustrate the “will of the people”.
Right now, the parliamentary tussle between the two houses is akin to the warehouse scene in Reservoir Dogs, where a group of callous individuals who are all deeply suspicious of each other trade insults in a confined, claustrophobic space as they try to map the best way forward. Mr Blonde, who is easily the film’s most evil character, gets one of the best lines of the show when he confronts Mr White over his taunting advances. “Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?”, he says, which is rather like the position Rishi Sunak finds himself in right now over his Rwanda deportation plan.
The prime minister’s biggest concern at the moment is not whether the Bill will clear the necessary parliamentary hurdles, but what happens if and when it does. Monday’s debate took place the day after the busiest day so far this year for Channel crossings, with more than 500 migrants arriving in the UK. The latest crossings took the provisional total for the year so far to 6,265 – 28 per cent higher than this time last year (4,899) and 7 per cent higher than the 5,828 recorded at this point in 2022.
One of the Bill’s central tenets is that it will act as a deterrent to the small boats crossing the Channel, or put another way, that the bark will be worse than the bite. But if this proves not to be the case then its raison d’etre is blown to smithereens, and you can’t blame ‘ridiculous’ peers or ‘frustrating’ judges for that. Even if the plan gets approved there are still no air carriers willing to help deport asylum seekers and very few houses available for them to live in when they get there. Rwandan figures suggest they will take no more than 1,000 asylum seekers in the five-year trial period, which is a sixth of those who have made it to these shores on small boats so far this year.
On Monday, Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock had it right when he pointed out that the scheme was “doomed to fail”. The policy is “fundamentally unworkable, unaffordable and unlawful”, he said, and few rational minds are arguing to the contrary. Soon, the prime minister will be pining for the days when he could simply argue the toss in this dogfight warehouse that we call Parliament.
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