LONDON, (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak avoided defeat in parliament yesterday on an emergency bill to revive his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, seeing off a revolt by dozens of his lawmakers that laid bare his party’s deep divisions.
Sunak, who has pinned his reputation on the strategy, in the end comfortably won the first vote on the legislation in the House of Commons after a day of last ditch negotiations and fears that some of his Conservative lawmakers would help defeat the bill because it was not tough enough.
“The British people should decide who gets to come to this country – not criminal gangs or foreign courts,” Sunak said on X after the result. “That’s what this bill delivers.”
Last month, the UK Supreme Court ruled Sunak’s policy of deporting to Rwanda those arriving illegally in small boats on England’s southern coast would breach British and international human rights laws and agreements.
In response, Sunak agreed a new treaty with the East African nation and brought forward emergency legislation designed to override legal obstacles that would stop deportations.
In power for 13 years and trailing the opposition Labour Party by around 20 points with an election expected next year, Sunak’s Conservatives have fractured along multiple lines and lost much of their discipline ahead of the first parliamentary vote on that bill.
Moderate Conservatives say they will not support the draft law if it means Britain breaching its human rights obligations, and right-wing politicians say it does not go far enough to stop migrants from making legal challenges to prevent their deportation.
All 350 Conservative lawmakers had been ordered by those in charge of party management to back it, but almost 40 were not recorded as having voted. The bill passed by 313 votes to 269.
“We have decided collectively that we cannot support the bill tonight because of its many omissions,” Mark Francois, speaking on behalf of some right-wing Conservative lawmakers, said ahead of the vote.