Rishi Sunak vows Rwanda Bill WILL be passed on Monday

Rishi Sunak has vowed the Rwanda Bill will be passed on Monday as he insisted there can be ‘no more delays’.

The PM warned peers he is ready to make Parliament sit through the night if they continue efforts to hamper the crucial legislation.

The House of Lords again refused to back down on Wednesday, passing more amendments despite MPs repeatedly dismissing their objections.

It means a fourth round of ‘ping-pong’ – where legislation is batted between the two Houses until agreement is reached – will begin in the Commons on Monday.

But answering questions after a speech in London this morning, Mr Sunak stressed that will be the final showdown.

‘The very simple thing here is that repeatedly, everyone has tried to block us from getting this Bill through. Yet again you saw it this week,’ he said.

‘You saw Labour peers blocking us again, and that’s enormously frustrating. Everyone’s patience with this has run thin, mine certainly has.

‘So our intention now is to get this done on Monday. No more prevarication, no more delay. We will sit there and vote until it’s done.’

He continued: ‘We’re going to get this Bill passed, and then we will work to get flights off so we can build that deterrent, because that is the only way to resolve this issue. If you care about stopping the boats, you’ve got to have a deterrent.’

No10 pointed the finger squarely at the House of Lords, which refused to back down in the latest stage of Parliamentary wrangling last night

Rishi Sunak has put the Rwanda Bill at the heart of his efforts to ‘stop the boats’. Pictured, migrants crossing the Channel earlier this week

The proposed law aims to send some asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Kigali in order to deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats.

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill and a new treaty are intended to prevent further legal challenges to the stalled asylum scheme after the Supreme Court ruled the plan was unlawful.

As well as compelling judges to regard the east African country as safe, it would give ministers the power to ignore emergency injunctions.

Despite MPs overturning previous changes by the upper chamber, peers on Wednesday renewed their demand that Rwanda cannot be treated as a safe country until an independent monitoring body has verified that protections contained in the treaty are implemented.

The provision would also allow the Secretary of State to effectively pull the plug on the scheme if the promised safeguards were not maintained.

Peers also reinserted an exemption from removal for those who worked with the UK military or Government overseas, such as Afghan interpreters.

Assuming MPs remove those amendments on Monday night, they will send the Bill immediately back to the Lords – and continue to sit until peers accept the will of the elected House.

The last time a standoff between the Houses went into the early hours was more than a decade ago, with politicians relying on camp beds as they batted legislation backwards and forwards.

Government sources have played down the impact of the wrangling, but many now believe flights cannot begin until mid-June at the earliest.

Yesterday the PM’s spokesman declined to stand by the timetable previously set out by Mr Sunak for flights to take off in the Spring, merely saying the policy will be implemented ‘as soon as possible’.

Ministers have been hinting that the RAF will be deployed to run the flights, instead of using a private airline.

There are reports that the Ministry of Defence is preparing to repurpose at least one RAF Voyager plane for deportations, with claims that the government has struggled to find a private airline.