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The United Kingdom introduced a bill on migrant transfers to Rwanda in the House of Commons on Tuesday, but the Tories were divided
Prominent members of the Conservative Party, both liberal and of the opposite, more radical leaning, are not hiding their dissatisfaction with the wording of Rishi Sunak's government's bill to end the transfer of asylum seekers to Rwanda, after it was rejected by the constitutional court last month . And they are warning the Prime Minister that the measure, which will arrive in the House of Commons on Tuesday, will not be passed in this form. Or if it is adopted – as the group leaders assure, it would need a majority of 30 Conservative MPs to block it – it will not work and will be subject to appeal. Therefore, “serious concerns” remain, despite everyone's desire to launch the plan in the name of tackling immigration, a crucial point in the government's program and, above all, a crucial test call for next year's elections. Lawyers from the party's legal field see problems in the text that are considered “extremely difficult to solve”. In their opinion, the measure does not do enough to ignore the European Court of Human Rights. While the moderate wing of the party denounces that the bill violates international law. Representatives from both factions will meet tomorrow to try to compare their positions.
“It's a bit like Brexit in the sense that the Rwanda program will bring the whole right back together. It is the unifying factor of the right,” commented a key party figure quoted by the Observer. “If in six months we find that the bill has come into force but has not worked, Rishi will find himself in a disastrous situation. So you have to make it work. The stakes cannot be higher,” a former Tory minister added. In short: Sunak, like Theresa May, was looking for a compromise solution to Brexit. And everyone agrees on this: if the plan fails, if the plan doesn't work, Sunak will fail too. According to Damian Green, leader of the Liberal Tory group One Nation, there are three problems with the measure that the government is fast-tracking. First, the text declares that Rwanda is a safe country, without providing any concrete evidence of this. Powers are then delegated to ministers without scrutiny of their actions. Finally, the removal of the authorities' obligation not to violate human rights is worrying.
Britain signs new deal to send migrants to Rwanda