Deportation flights from UK to Rwanda will take off in summer - Government

LONDON, England

The first flights deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda will take off in 10 to 12 weeks Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has announced - missing his original spring target.

He said, his government has already prepared an airfield and secured charter plane slots to ensure flights take off.

Mr Sunak promised to keep MPs and Lords late into the night on Monday to pass his flagship Rwanda bill.

"No ifs, no buts, these flights are going to Rwanda," he said.

He told a Downing Street press conference: "The first flight will leave in 10 to 12 weeks.

"Of course that is later than we wanted but we have always been clear that processing will take time and if Labour peers had not spent weeks holding up the bill in the House of Lords to try to block these flights altogether we would have begin this process weeks ago."

Mr Sunak said he will work to "a drumbeat of multiple flights a month" throughout the summer, "because that's how you build a systematic deterrent and that's how you'll stop the boats," he said.

To smooth the approach to the first flights taking off, Mr Sunak said the Home Office had been building extra space in the asylum process, including:

• Additional detention spaces are available, and 200 case workers have been hired
• 25 courtrooms and 150 judges to hear asylum cases, offering 5,000 days in court
• Hardening rules around European Court of Human Rights injunction, making it difficult for the Strasbourg-based court to halt deportation flights
• A pre-booked airfield with slots for commercial charter flights to Rwanda booked
• 500 escorts for the flights, with 300 more in training.

The PM's comments come as a prolonged stand-off between the Lords and the Commons over the bill comes to a head - with both Houses of Parliament scheduled to sit late into the night to get the bill passed.

Peers have been pushing for a change to the bill that would establish a committee to monitor the safety of asylum seekers in Rwanda, operating outside the country's own judiciary

Under the amendment, the first flights could not take off until the committee had deemed Rwanda safe.

Mr Mitchell, the senior Foreign Office minister in the Commons, praised Rwanda's judicial independence, calling Chief Justice Judge Rugege "an enormously distinguished and respected international jurist".

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "Some of the discussions that have gone on in the Lords about the judicial arrangements, the legal arrangements within Rwanda, have been patronising and in my view border on racism."

Last week, peers also backed an amendment that would exempt asylum seekers from Afghanistan, who had previously assisted British troops when the military was stationed there, from being among those forced to fly out to Rwanda.

Peers want their two amendments added to the bill before they will ratify it, which is required before the government can pass it into law.

MPs will vote on the bill and its amendments from the Lords on Monday afternoon.

This ping pong between the two Houses of Parliament could go on until either the government concedes and makes concessions, or peers give up on their suggested amendments.