The British government’s controversial plan to transfer asylum seekers who arrived illegally in the Kingdom to Rwanda has received the parliamentary green light, after a marathon debate between the Houses of Lords and Commons that lasted until late at night. Unelected members of the upper house, who review legislative proposals, repeatedly sent the amended plan back to lawmakers in the lower house but ultimately agreed to make no further changes, ensuring the bill now becomes law.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the ruling Conservatives have sought to pass legislation that will force judges to consider the East African nation a safe third country. They also want to give asylum decision-makers the power to ignore sections of international and national human rights law to get around a UK Supreme Court ruling that sending migrants on a one-way ticket to Kigali is illegal. But the British government faced a parliamentary battle to achieve this. The House of Lords criticized the bill as inadequate, calling in particular that Rwanda could not be considered safe until an independent monitoring body said it was so. MPs in the House of Commons, where the Conservatives have a majority, voted against each amendment and asked the lords to think again in a process known as ‘parliamentary ping pong’. The unelected upper house, where there is no absolute majority for any party, put its foot down.
But just before midnight they finally gave in to the will of the elected MPs and agreed to make no further amendments, ending the stalemate and ensuring the bill will now receive royal assent to become law. Sunak’s government has come under increasing pressure to reduce the record number of asylum seekers crossing the Channel from northern France in small boats, particularly following promises of a tougher approach to immigration after the UK left the European Union.
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