Rishi Sunak has promised “not go any further” in strengthening his Rwanda deportation bill, a top Tory MP has claimed.
The prime minister has assured centrist former deputy PM Damian Green that the contested asylum policy will not be toughened up.
It comes amid pressure from right-wing Tory MPs to amend the bill when it returns to parliament to make sure it is “sufficiently robust”.
Mr Sunak’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, deemed illegal by the Supreme Court in November, has split the Tory left and right.
Right-wing MPs are demanding a backup bill, designed to salvage the policy, is strengthened to allow the government to override international laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Moderate MPs from the One Nation caucus have threatened to vote the bill down if it risks breaching Britain’s international obligations.
Now Mr Green, chairman of the One Nation caucus of more than 100 Tory MPs, has told the New Statesman: “The Prime Minister’s looked me in the eye and said that he doesn’t want to go any further.
“So I am fairly optimistic.”
But one Tory MP on the right of the party hit back, telling The Independent: “Well he looked us in the eyes and said he was open to discussing amendments to strengthen the Bill.
“I guess time will tell.”
And, in a warning to MPs and ministers agitating for the bill to override international law, he said the centrist caucus would “snap”.
He said: “The Prime Minister’s got within an inch of what I would regard as acceptable. Almost all our members voted for second reading with the clear message of ‘thus far and no further’ and ‘don’t take that extra inch’, which some colleagues of the right of the party want us to do.
“What this Rwanda bill has shown is that actually we are like a piece of elastic that can be stretched and stretched but will, in the end, snap.
“Breaking the law is what snaps it.”
It comes ahead of Labour tabling a vote in parliament calling for the release of documents relating to the policy.
The party will ask for any documents that show the cost of relocating each individual asylum seeker to Rwanda as well as a list of all payments made or scheduled to be made to Rwanda’s government.
It will also ask for the government’s internal breakdown of the more than 35,000 asylum decisions made last year and an unredacted copy of the confidential memorandum of understanding ministers reached with the East African country.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government’s refusal to “come clean” on the cost of the Rwanda scheme is “totally unacceptable”.
“The Conservatives should stop dragging out this chaos and come clean about the real costs and problems,” Ms Cooper said.
Damian Green
