Peers have inflicted their first defeat against Rishi Sunak’s proposed Rwanda asylum law putting the unelected Lords on a collision course with the Government.
The upper chamber backed by 274 votes to 172, majority 102, a move to ensure the draft legislation, aimed at clearing the way to send asylum seekers who cross the Channel in small boats on a one-way flight to Kigali, is fully compliant with the law.
Ahead of the next election, Mr Sunak has made “stopping the boats” a key pledge of his leadership.
The first defeat is likely to set into motion “ping pong” between the Lords and the Commons when the Bill eventually returns for votes by MPs.
This back and forth can only happen three times before the Government has a chance to invoke the Parliament Act and override the Upper House.
This is expected to take place for the week commencing March 18.
With Labour set to put up little resistance, the bill should be passed into law by March 20 meaning flights could take off soon after then.
Before the vote, the Archbishop of Canterbury invoked Nazi Germany and “the horrors of the 1940s” as he mounted a defence of international human rights law.
The Most Rev Justin Welby said: “The rise in international human rights law grew out of the horrors of the 1940s, where a government that in 1933 in Germany had been legally and properly elected passed horrific laws that did terrible things, starting from within a few weeks of the election of Adolf Hitler.
“That continued and most historians agree that the first two elections gave the Nazi Party a legitimate majority.
“Winston Churchill’s advocacy of the European Court of Human Rights after the Second World War grew up in order to give a fallback where domestic law was not doing the right thing by linking it to international law and ensuring there was a stop that says ‘well you can do this perfectly legitimate thing domestically, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right, and always the right thing to do’.
“Winston Churchill’s advocacy of the European Court of Human Rights after the Second World War grew up in order to give a fallback where domestic law was not doing the right thing by linking it to international law and ensuring there was a stop that says ‘well you can do this perfectly legitimate thing domestically, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right, and always the right thing to do’.
“Now we’re not in any situation remotely like that, let’s be clear. The Government is not doing something on the scale of what we saw at that stage. But the Government is challenging the right of international law to constrain our actions, and the point of international law is to stop governments going ahead with things that are wrong.”
He added: “One of the things I was brought up on believing and even believe it or not when I was trained as a clergyman… One of the things we were told is it is a basic rule of ethics and morality that two wrongs don’t make a right. So the fact we’ve done the wrong thing in the past doesn’t automatically make it right today.”
The Prime Minister’s spokesman insisted the Rwanda Bill is “the right bill”.
He said: “The PM is clear that the Rwanda Bill as drafted is the right bill. That is the bill that will allow us to get flights off to Rwanda.
“It’s the toughest piece of illegal migration legislation ever introduced. And it closes down all but the narrowest possible grounds for appeals, giving us confidence that we can deliver flights off the ground.
“And we look forward to the Lords looking at the bill carefully, and working with the Government to ensure that we can protect innocent lives from perilous journeys across the channel.”
