Rishi Sunak faces more questions over Rwanda plan amid reports Home Office prepared protest scenarios – UK politics live

Incidentally, the speaker programme is a little sparser today, but my colleague Graeme Wearden is in Davos for the Guardian. Today the conference will wrap up with its traditional set-piece panel on the global economic outlook, where key figures including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, and Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank. He will also be following the Tata Steel developments closely, although I expect I will take in a little bit of that here too.

You can follow that live here: Davos day four – global economic outlook in focus

Speaking to the BBC, former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has said that there “are dogs in the street that know” that deportation flights are “probably never going to happen”.

She told the broadcaster:

Let’s have a debate about immigration, absolutely. Every sovereign nation should be in charge of who comes in; not everybody has a right to go to every country in the world – I completely get all of that.

But where is the balance in this, rather than some of the language that is being used, some of the knots that people are getting into?

And this thing about putting people on planes to Rwanda. I mean, there are dogs in the street that know that, one, it is probably never going to happen.

And two, if it does, it is going to be a number so small that it makes very little difference to the bottom line.

Davidson is in the House of Lords, where both the treaty with Rwanda and the Safety of Rwanda Bill will need to make progress in the next couple of weeks before Rishi Sunak can make another attempt at getting his flagship Rwanda deportation policy off the ground.

Aside from the question of how Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation legislation can actually get on to the statue books and survive subsequent legal challenges, there are also practical consideration. There are reports this morning in the Times that the Home Office hired an aircraft hangar and a fuselage to practise the actual delivery of potential deportees to the planes themselves.

Matt Dathan writes, in what the paper labels as an exclusive:

Migrants will be escorted from a detention facility on an airbase one by one by security guards. As part of preparations for the first flights, the guards have undergone special training programmes to deal with “disruptive” people.

Staff will mimic different scenarios that the Home Office expects them to encounter when they move migrants on to aircraft bound for Kigali.

Scenarios that are being practised include migrants resorting to violence to prevent being put on a plane or Extinction Rebellion-style protests where individuals “play dead” by lying on the floor and refusing to move. They are also preparing for the prospect of dirty protests and demonstrations by campaigners outside the airbase in an attempt to halt flights.

It is estimated that five officers will be needed for each migrant being removed.

There is liable to be criticism that this represents further Home Office spending on the Rwanda plan, with the actual legal departure of flights still a distant prospect.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling live coverage of UK politics for Friday. Rishi Sunak will be out and about in south-east England today, where the prime minister can expect further questioning on how his Rwanda plan can get through the Lords.

Former Scottish Tory leader and peer Ruth Davidson has said flights are “probably never going to happen” amid reports the Home Office has hired a hangar and aircraft fuselage to rehearse forcing people on to flights in the teeth of expected protests.

There will be further fall out from the news that Tata Steel is expected to be closing its blast furnaces in south Wales. Local MP and shadow minister Stephen Kinnock has said this morning they “should really look again” at the plan.

And William Paul Patterson, director of Fujitsu Services will be giving evidence in the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry today. You will be able to watch that here.

Here are the other headlines:

• The Home Office spent a six-figure sum on mental health support for frontline Border Force officers after mental health-related absences for staff across the agency increased by 45%, an FoI has revealed.

• The Home Office has also made a significant U-turn on the rights of EU citizens who were in the UK before Brexit, allowing those who missed the deadline to apply for post-Brexit permanent residency cards to remain in the country.

• A bad signal on the economy for Sunak’s government, as retailers in Great Britain suffered a dire Christmas. Cash-strapped consumers cut back on shopping in December, fuelling the biggest fall in monthly sales since shops closed during the pandemic.

• A UN torture expert has repeated her call for prisoners jailed under the indefinite sentencing regime in England and Wales to be granted release dates.

• Sadiq Khan has announced a fare freeze for some tickets on London’s public transport network.

As it is a Friday, it is a quiet day in Westminster. There will be debate on private members’ bills in the Commons, and the Lords are not sitting. The Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd are also not sitting.

The day after the public service strike in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris is saying he will introduce “pragmatic, appropriate and limited” legislation to address the deadlock in Stormont. More on developments there in a bit.

It is Martin Belam with you today. I will try to dip in to the comments if I get the chance, but if you want to draw my attention to anything – especially if you spot an error or typo – it is best to email me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.