Rishi Sunak willing to defy Lords over small boats Bill
Rishi Sunak has indicated that he is willing to defy the House of Lords and force his proposed law to tackle small boat crossings through Parliament, as peers threatened to delay the Bill.
Speaking to The Telegraph, the Prime Minister said the new measures to reduce migrant crossings were “very strongly” backed by MPs and “incredibly important”.
Mr Sunak twice indicated that he was open to using the Parliament Act to ram through the Illegal Migration Bill if needed. The Act allows the House of Commons to overrule the House of Lords if a piece of legislation is voted down by peers, but is rarely used.
On Monday, opposition peers called for the legislation to be stopped from progressing until an impact assessment is published. The Liberal Democrats have previously tried to block the Bill.
On Monday, Mr Sunak declared his small boats plan was working, citing a 20 per cent drop in illegal Channel arrivals so far this year.
He also announced the purchase of two new accommodation barges to house migrants and revealed that for the first time the French have intercepted more than half of the migrants trying to cross the Channel.
In a Telegraph interview, the Prime Minister issued a warning shot to the Lords, where the Tories do not have a majority, when asked if he was willing to use the mechanism.
Mr Sunak said: “One of my five priorities is to stop the boats. This legislation is an incredibly important part of how we’re going to do that.
“It passed the House of Commons very strongly. And my intention is to see this piece of legislation on the statute books so that we can start using it.”
Asked a second time, Mr Sunak said: “I want to see this legislation on the statute books. It’s one of my five priorities. It is the country’s priority and this legislation is an incredibly important part of how we’re going to do that.”
A government source added later: “The Bill has overwhelming support in the Commons – and the Lords should respect that.”
During a trip to Dover on Monday to meet Border Force officials helping rescue small boats in distress, Mr Sunak said: “Our approach is working. I said I will stop the boats and I meant it.”
He cited the 20 per cent drop in the number of migrants crossing the Channel, from 9,575 in the first five months of last year to 7,610 in the same period this year.
French border officers and police have also had more success preventing crossings, with 53.2 per cent – or 8,635 – stopped this year so far. It was 41.9 per cent last year.
Mr Sunak announced that two more barges to house 1,000 migrants had been purchased, taking the total to three – including one in Portland Harbour, Dorset, which will take the first of its 500 asylum seekers in two weeks time.
He also said two former RAF bases – at Scampton in Lincolnshire and Wethersfield in Essex – will open this summer to take a further 3,000 migrants.
A 90 per cent drop in Albanians crossing the Channel appears to in part explain the fall in overall numbers – though recent figures have also shown a threefold increase in the number of Turkish migrants using small boats. The number of Indians crossing has risen eightfold.
A House of Commons Library briefing suggested only seven laws have been passed using the Parliament Act. The last was the Hunting Act of 2004, which banned fox hunting.
The move would only be needed if the Lords voted down, rather than altered, the small boats Bill.
Liberal Democrat peers tried such a move earlier in the year, but did not get enough support. There is still time for another attempt.
On Monday, during a Lords debate, peers threatened to delay the Illegal Migration Bill unless the Home Office publishes its impact assessment of the measures.
Labour’s Lord Hunt of Kings Heath received shouts of encouragement as he said the Bill should not progress to its next stage without the assessment being available.
Lord Murray of Blidworth, a Home Office minister, said it would be published “in due course”.
Meanwhile Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, has been warned of a new wave of Albanian migrants crossing the Channel this summer, despite the crackdown on small boats.
She has been handed an internal survey, commissioned by the UK embassy in Tirana, showing that half of young Albanians want to cross the Channel to Britain this summer.
The poll, based on 1,800 households in Kukes, the main area in northern Albania for migrants, showed half of young men aged between 17 and 22 wanted to quit their homeland and come to Britain despite the risks of crossing the Channel.
On Monday, Mrs Braverman said new requirements for asylum seekers to share rooms, as first revealed by The Telegraph, would save £250 million a year and reduce the need to find another 90 hotels.
The Home Office is currently spending £6 million a day housing nearly 50,000 migrants in 395 hotels.
However Lee Anderson, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, warned that “sharing rooms and barges, and relying on the French is not the answer”.
He said: “The answer is … to get the flights off to Rwanda as quickly as possible.”
The Court of Appeal is due to give its verdict on the legality of the Rwanda deportation scheme within days. Mrs Braverman said the Rwanda scheme and new Illegal Migration Bill would act as a further deterrent.
“To stop the boats, we must go further,” she said.
