Rishi Sunak faces 'Conservative meltdown' over Rwanda bill

Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to make more judges available to hear appeals from asylum seekers, in a bid to save his bill

(Image credit: il Harris - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Former prime minister Boris Johnson has joined a mounting revolt by right-wing Conservative MPs against Rishi Sunak's Rwanda bill.

Sunak is facing a Tory rebellion over concerns that his Rwanda migration policy will be "scuppered" because, in its current form, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill allows asylums seekers to lodge individual legal challenges against their deportation, said The Times.

The PM faced a major "blow" to his authority over the weekend, said the BBC, when two deputy chairs of the Tory party, Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith, joined more than 60 MPs in backing amendments to the bill, which will return to the Commons tomorrow. And a further intervention from Johnson, whose administration introduced the Rwanda scheme, has left Sunak facing a "Conservative meltdown", said The Guardian.

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In an attempt to stave off revolt, Downing Street may announce plans to move 150 judges to the upper tribunal – the body that will hear individual legal appeals lodged by asylum seekers under the new legislation – in order to "fast-track" the process, according to The Times. But former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, as well as allies of leading Conservative rebels, told the Financial Times that the plans "did not go far enough".

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Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.