His victory is meager but Rishi Sunak still wanted to highlight it. Thursday January 18, the British Prime Minister summoned journalists to Downing Street to welcome the fact that his “security of Rwanda” bill had finally been adopted at third reading in the House of Commons the previous evening. About sixty deputies from his own conservative camp tried to amend it to strengthen it, believing that as it stood it was not tough enough, but these rebels, all belonging to the right of the Tories, did not did not have the guts to go so far as to vote against.
Delivering a brief speech from behind a narrow lectern crossed out with the slogan “Stop the boats”, Rishi Sunak assured “have a plan”, thanks to this legislative text, to limit the arrivals of migrants from the Belgian and French coasts – around 30,000 people made the crossing in 2023. The bill must finally make operational the agreement signed with Kigali almost two years ago, to transfer to Rwanda asylum seekers who arrived in the United Kingdom in “small boats” (“inflatable boats”), so that their request is processed on site and accepted, or not, by this East African country. This agreement constitutes “the essential instrument of deterrence” to limit illegal immigration and “take back control of our borders”insisted the Prime Minister.
But his press briefing was mainly aimed at putting pressure on the House of Lords, which must examine, amend and then validate the bill. “The question is whether the opposition [travailliste] and the House of Lords will attempt to obstruct the will of the citizens expressed by the deputies. Or if they are going to do what is right and support the text,” asked Rishi Sunak out loud. The Tories not having a majority in the Upper House of Westminster and the latter being made up of a large number of jurists, the game promises to be complicated.
Sovereignist rhetoric of the Brexiters
Because this text of law flirts even more than previous conservative migration laws with British constitutional provisions and the international obligations of the United Kingdom, a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Geneva Convention on Refugees. The bill was drafted urgently by Downing Street at the end of 2023, with the contested aim of circumventing a November 2023 decision by the British Supreme Court declaring illegal the deportations of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
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