Rishi Sunak to bring in emergency law after court’s Rwanda ruling

Rishi Sunak is introducing emergency legislation to “confirm” that Rwanda is a safe country for asylum seekers deported from the UK, after the supreme court blocked his plan.

The prime minister said he would bring forward the new laws shortly and would be prepared to defy any judgment from the European court of human rights in Strasbourg if there were further attempts to stop Rwanda flights going ahead.

“I will not allow a foreign court to block these flights,” he said, arguing that the supreme court judgment had hardened his resolve for the Rwanda plan to proceed.

He added: “I am prepared to do what is necessary to get flights off. I will not take the easy way out.”

Addressing a Downing Street press conference, Sunak also said he was working on a new international treaty with Rwanda that would provide “guarantees in law” that people deported from the UK would not be returned to their home countries.

The prime minister said he “accepts it and respects” the supreme court decision but he did not agree with it and would find a way around it.

He said people were “frustrated by repeated challenges to attempts to get this done”, and he declined to criticise the Conservative party deputy chair Lee Anderson, who said the UK should ignore the court’s ruling and allow the flights to take off anyway.

“My patience has run thin, as indeed I think the country’s patience has run thin,” Sunak said, claiming that he thought planes could be running to Rwanda by the spring of next year.

Sunak was asked three times if he could guarantee that at least one plane would take off for Rwanda before the next election. He declined to do so, saying only that the government was “working extremely hard” to make this happen.

Some Conservative MPs had been calling for emergency laws that would go even further than Sunak’s proposal by legislating to ignore the international courts and treaties on this issue.

Shortly before Sunak spoke, his former home secretary Suella Braverman joined a backlash from rightwing Tory MPs against the court decision, calling for emergency legislation to “block off” international and domestic legal avenues preventing the flights going ahead.

However, the prime minister stopped short of saying he would withdraw from the European convention on human rights, despite pressure from many on the right of his party.

He said he would instead “revisit those international relationships to remove the obstacles in our way” and highlighted other countries, including Italy, looking to introduce similar measures to deport people to third countries.

Sunak said he had already made progress in relation to rule 39 orders – the interim injunctions issued by the European court of human rights, one of which blocked the only planned flight to Rwanda.

He said countries would be able to make representations opposing the injunctions, and the court would only use them in exceptional circumstances.

Sunak also said he was confident that the new law and new treaty would mean the UK would meet its obligations under the European convention.

While Sunak appeared to double down on his Rwanda plan, some Tory MPs called for him to rethink. Natalie Elphicke, a backbencher and former minister, told Times Radio: “I think that the supreme court’s decision today is very clear and we need to move forward from the Rwanda focus.

“And the court was clear that the sorts of outsourcing agreements that the UK might want to enter into, that other countries enter into in principle can be progressed. But what we need to see is a real focus, particularly on the immediate risk of people smugglers being emboldened in these winter months.”