The passage of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s bill to relocate refugees to Rwanda may be delayed until at least next month after the upper house of parliament defeated the government and reinstated a demand for greater protections.
The UK government wants to relocate thousands of asylum seekers who arrive in Britain each year to live in Rwanda, but legal challenges have so far prevented it.
The legislation is central to Sunak’s pledge to stop the arrival of asylum seekers and he hopes the relocation flights will reverse the fortunes of his Conservative Party, which is heavily trailing in the polls with the next election looming.
Unelected members of the House of Lords, largely made up of former politicians and government officials, voted on Wednesday for a second time to amend the legislation.
The defeat for the government means the bill will be sent back to the House of Commons in a process known as “parliamentary ping-pong” where the two chambers try to find common ground.
The resulting back-and-forth means the bill is unlikely to become law until after parliament returns from its Easter break – in the middle of next month at the earliest.
This is likely to push back when the first deportation flights take off because, one government official said, it will probably take at least a month to organise them from the moment when the legislation passed.
– Reuters
