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Rishi Sunak has admitted flights to send asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda will not begin until the summer, as he finally secured parliamentary approval for legislation to underpin the government’s contentious plan.
The prime minister originally hoped the first flights to Rwanda would get off the ground in the spring, but he said at a Downing Street press conference on Monday that they would not happen until July.
He was speaking before the House of Lords abandoned efforts to amend the government’s Rwanda bill after failing in the last of many attempts to introduce safeguards into the legislation.
Sunak’s latest timetable for the start of Rwanda flights sparked speculation among Labour and Conservative MPs that they may be timed around a possible summer general election.
Sunak vowed flights would leave “every month” until they had deterred undocumented migration across the English Channel.
Labour campaign strategists believe the prime minister could be forced to call a summer election to head off a potential Tory putsch against his leadership, if the party suffers heavy losses in local polls on May 2.
They suspect that by promising Rwanda flights in July, Sunak might either call an election in June — vowing to start the removals if he won — or could make them part of a July poll strategy.
“The policy isn’t going to work as a deterrent,” said one ally of Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader. “Sunak might think it’s better to have an election before people realise that.”
Sunak is also scheduled to attend a Nato summit in Washington in July, allowing him to burnish his credentials as an international statesman, and could have some good economic news, with some economists anticipating inflation could fall below the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target by then.
Sunak’s allies insist the prime minister is planning for “an autumn election” — that would allow time for a tax-cutting “mini” Budget and potentially for the central bank to start cutting interest rates.
The government argues that the Rwanda policy will deter people from taking small boats that have ferried thousands of irregular migrants across the Channel to the UK in recent years.
But opposition parties depict it as an expensive and ineffective gimmick on a politically explosive topic, with the number of people arriving in small boats likely to far exceed those being sent to Rwanda.
“The success of this deterrent doesn’t rest on one flight alone,” Sunak said, promising “a regular rhythm of multiple flights every month over the summer and beyond, until the boats are stopped”.
Home Office data shows that 6,265 people have arrived in small boats this year, a 25 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2023.
Sunak said commercial charter planes and hundreds of trained staff were ready to take asylum seekers to Africa and that an airfield had been earmarked for the purpose.
Government insiders had hoped the Rwanda bill, which declares the African nation “safe” for asylum seekers in a bid to fend off judicial challenges, would complete its parliamentary passage last week.
But the plan has been strongly criticised by government opponents on the left and right.
A final attempt was made by peers on Monday night to compel home secretary James Cleverly to consult an independent monitoring committee before determining whether or not Rwanda is safe for asylum seekers.
But after Conservative MPs voted en masse against the change in the House of Commons, peers conceded defeat. It ended a protracted round of parliamentary “ping pong” over the legislation between the two houses.
Alison Thewliss, home affairs spokesperson for the Scottish National Party, said the government’s refusal to accept any revisions to what she called a “state-sponsored people trafficking bill” showed the “parliamentary system is broken”.
Nigel Farage, honorary president of the rightwing party Reform UK, attacked the government’s policy on X as a “con job from the Tories” that would be blocked by the courts.
Sunak admitted there had been a tenfold increase in the number of vulnerable Vietnamese migrants paying criminal gangs to enter the UK this year.
“The truth is, we need innovative solutions to address what is a global migration crisis to disrupt the business model of people-smuggling gangs. And that means a systematic deterrent,” he said.
Sunak accused Labour of having “no plans” for irregular migration. “They are resigned to the idea that you will never fully solve this problem,” he said.
“Be in no doubt about the choice that the country will face later this year.”