Rishi Sunak has vowed to “finish the job” of getting his Rwanda plan off the ground as he batted away questions about his future and fought to regain control of his mutinous party.
The UK prime minister said his new Rwanda law would prevent legal challenges and finally allow deportation flights to take off to the African country, despite opposition from hardline Tories and the prospect of a bitter parliamentary battle.
Defending his plans, he said the bill fundamentally addressed concerns raised by the supreme court over the deportation policy and would guarantee that Rwanda was “unequivocally” safe for asylum seekers.
His tetchy appearance at an emergency press conference followed a chaotic 24 hours during which his immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, quit over the proposed law, arguing that it did not go far enough and was a “triumph of hope over experience”.
The prime minister has staked his government’s reputation on coming up with a plan to “stop the boats” so the departure was a serious blow to his authority. It comes amid speculation that Tory MPs were putting in letters to trigger a confidence vote.
The government hopes to rush emergency legislation through parliament for MPs and peers to declare that Rwanda is a safe destination for asylum-seekers, with the first votes expected on Tuesday.
In the Commons, Tory rightwingers may seek to beef up the bill by calling for it to in effect override international law. Sources also said MPs on the moderate One Nation wing of the party were “very nervous” about the implications of the legislation, which is likely to run into difficulties if it makes it to the Lords.
Facing repeated questions over his position, Sunak told reporters he would not treat the legislation as a vote of confidence in his own leadership, freeing up Tory rebels to vote against it. With Labour having stated that it will oppose the plans, it would take just 29 Tory MPs to vote it down.
Pressed on whether he would call a general election if the passage of the legislation was frustrated, Sunak said: “We’ve got to finish the job and I’m going to see this thing through. I’m confident I can get this thing done.”
In an attempt to curtail a growing rebellion on the right wing of the Conservative party, the prime minister said the legislation would be an “effective deterrent” to people coming to the UK illegally and would restore public trust in the system.
He said the law would end “the merry-go-round of legal challenges” that had blocked the Rwanda plan so far. Sunak said: “We have blocked every single reason that has ever been used to prevent flights to Rwanda from taking off … We have set the bar so high that it will be vanishingly rare to meet it.
“The only extremely narrow exception will be if you can prove with credible and compelling evidence that you specifically have a real and imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm.”
He attempted to minimise the differences with the Tory right. “For the people who say, ‘you should do something different’, the difference between them and me is an inch, given everything that we have closed. We’re talking about an inch,” he said.
“That inch, by the way, is the difference between the Rwandans participating in this scheme and not.”
The Kigali government has stressed the need for the new UK legislation to be compatible with international law. Sunak said: “If we go any further the entire scheme will collapse and there is no point having a bill with nowhere to send people to.”
But Sunak repeated his point that if the European court of human rights intervened to stop flights taking off once the legislation was in place, he would “do what is necessary” to get the scheme working, a hint to the Tory right that he might consider pulling out of the European convention on human rights completely.
Jenrick stood down on Wednesday after it was revealed that the legislation did not allow the government to override international laws that have stopped it from sending asylumseekers to Rwanda, meaning the new law would probably be challenged in court.
Sunak has appointed two ministers to cover the brief, splitting it into two in an attempt to underline the importance of migration to his Tory project. Michael Tomlinson will become the minister for illegal migration – attending cabinet – while Tom Pursglove becomes the minister for legal migration and delivery.
Earlier on Thursday, Suella Braverman, the sacked home secretary, said of the bill: “The reality and sorry truth is, it just won’t work.”
Braverman again told Sunak of the “perilous situation” the Conservatives had found themselves in, given his pledge to “stop the boats” at the start of the year. She has said the Tories faced “electoral oblivion” unless ministers blocked all laws used to halt deportation flights.
The emergency bill will give ministers the power to ignore some judgments from the Strasbourg court relating to asylum, while stopping short of leaving or “dis-applying” the ECHR in its entirety.