New defeats for the government’s Rwanda bill in the House of Lords have set up a parliamentary showdown on Wednesday – forcing MPs to consider changes to Rishi Sunak’s stop the boats plan.

Downing Street wants to get the bill – which declares Rwanda a safe country and stops appeals from asylum seekers being sent there on safety grounds – on the statute books this week.

On Monday, the House of Commons stripped seven amendments from the bill previously imposed by the Lords. It was then debated again today.

Politics latest:
No 10 criticises bid to shut down Brussels conference

But with new amendments being added once again by peers, the Commons will need to debate these changes and vote on them on Wednesday – with the Lords sitting later in the evening to consider whether to implement further amendments.

The government had been hoping to get the bill passed on Wednesday, but this depends on parliamentary arithmetic and whether peers propose more changes.

A date for when the government wants to start flights is not set in stone – although ministers have said they want to do so within weeks.

Four fresh defeats for plan in the Lords

An attempt to add an amendment by Lord Vernon Coaker, a Labour frontbencher, was successful – by 258 votes to 233.

This amendment aimed to force the bill to have “due regard” to international law and also the Children Act, Human Rights Act and Modern Slavery Act.

It is a slightly more focused attempt to force the bill to comply with existing legislation.

An amendment proposed by crossbencher and former judge Lord David Hope was also successful, with 266 peers voting for it, and 227 against.

It sought to stop the government from declaring Rwanda safe until a report had been completed by a monitoring committee set up as part of the new treaty.

The change also provided a pathway to remove the safe status via a report to the government by the same committee.

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A third amendment, proposed by Labour backbencher Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, also succeeded, with 253 peers backing it and 236 opposing.

This amendment is another attempt to introduce a way to appeal against the assertion that Rwanda is a safe country, and to provide a way to stop people being deported during appeals.

A fourth amendment, in the name of Labour’s Lord Des Browne, was also successful, with a vote of 275 to 218.

Lord Browne’s amendment seeks to exempt those who served for or with the British armed forces from being sent to Rwanda.

Locked out and not allowed back in.

That was the rather extraordinary position Nigel Farage and some conservative politicians found themselves in today at a right-wing conference in Brussels.

The police’s action provoked yet again arguments around free speech and extremism – but ultimately ended up creating major news too.

Politics latest: No 10 criticises bid to shut down conference

It wasn’t meant to be that way.

The National Conservativism Conference is frankly a fringe event. Yes, it started five years ago, and previous guests have included Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

This year Mr Farage and Suella Braverman turned up. These are undoubtedly big voices on the right, but they weren’t expected to create much news.

In fact, most of the limited coverage was likely to focus on the former home secretary’s rather punchy attack on her old boss the prime minister and setting out a case for leaving the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Instead, the repeated actions from several district mayors in Brussels to ensure the event didn’t have a venue took centre stage.

Explaining why he had brought in the police – the mayor Emir Kir said some of the attendees hold anti-gay and anti-abortion views.

And writing on X he claimed: “The far right is not welcome.”

This unsurprisingly provoked an angry response from those there, including Mr Farage, who told Sky News: “Have you seen the people in the room? Does this look like a bunch of yobs to you? Far, far from it.

“These are a lot of very respectable, very eminent people. I mean, we’ve got bishops here.

“We’ve got a prime minister of a country here. We’ve got a European royal family here.

“I mean, these are very respectable people. There’s also no protest outside of any significance at all. It’s about closing down an ideology.”

Irrespective of who is right and who is wrong, this latest skirmish in the constant battles around free speech was seized upon by the conference as the latest example of cancel culture.

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Cancel culture in real time as one claimed.

And the rather blunt use of the police, far from silencing those in attendance, merely seemed to amplify their arguments.

This makes it difficult to conclude that if you wanted people not to hear your views about cancel culture, the actions of the Brussels authorities only helped in that cause.

Nigel Farage has hit out at “cancel culture” after officers moved to shut down the National Conservatism conference in Brussels.

Local officials arrived as the former Brexit Party leader was finishing a speech at the event, which is also due to hear from Hungary’s pro-Putin leader Viktor Orban and two Conservative MPs.

Politics Live: Police turn up at conference while Nigel Farage on stage

Emir Kir, the mayor of Brussels district Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, said he had issued an order banning the conference from taking place on Tuesday “to guarantee public safety”.

He added: “In Etterbeek, in Brussels City and in Saint-Josse, the far-right is not welcome.”

Tory MP Suella Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary last year, was also due to speak on Tuesday, as well as Conservative MP Miriam Cates.

Conference organisers said they were launching a legal challenge to Mr Kir’s order, adding: “There is no public disturbance and no grounds to shut down a gathering of politicians, intellectuals, journalists, students, civic leaders, and concerned citizens.

“The police entered the venue on our invitation, saw the proceedings and the press corps, and quickly withdrew. Is it possible they witnessed how peaceful the event is?”

Police officers arrived two hours into the event near the city’s European Quarter to inform organisers it must close.

Officers did not appear to force the event to shut down and speeches continued.

Sky’s political correspondent Darren McCaffery, who is at the scene, said police initially told the venue owner that if the building isn’t evacuated they will start removing people.

However, they later said they “would not be dragging people out” and instead the tactic was to stop anyone new from entering the venue.

He said this is the third venue chosen by conference organisers, after two others cancelled at the last minute “due to political pressure”.

Police ‘shutting down ideology’

Mr Farage said the conference attendees were “respectable people” and “there’s no protest of significance” happening against it.

“It’s about closing down an ideology,” he told Sky News.

Read More:
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Speaking to broadcasters as he left the venue, he said it would be closing down shortly and “I decided to make a discreet exit”.

“I’m not going to stay when the police storm the place and get everybody out. I’m not going to get involved in a fight.”

He added that he had “personally” experienced cancel culture in Brussels, such as restaurants and pubs refusing to service him, but now “global media” can see it happening.

Ms Braverman accused police of trying to “undermine and denigrate” free speech, saying she was there to talk about “issues that matter”, including border security.

Rishi Sunak had faced pressure to block her attendance at the conference, with Labour shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth urging him to stop the former home secretary “giving oxygen to these divisive and dangerous individuals”.

Downing Street later said it was “extremely disturbing” that the conference was shut down, citing freedom of speech.

National Conservatism is a global, right-wing movement which claims that traditional values are being “undermined and overthrown”.

Under Boris Johnson’s government in 2020, Conservative backbencher Daniel Kawczynski was reprimanded for attending a National Conservatism conference in Rome, with a Tory spokesman condemning the views of some other speakers, including Mr Orban.

Both Ms Braverman and Ms Cates addressed the National Conservatism conference in London last year, which was disrupted by protesters.

In her speech Ms Braverman claimed “it is not racist” to want control of our borders, while Ms Cates claimed that falling birth rates are “the one overarching threat.. to the whole of Western society” and that “cultural Marxism” was “destroying our children’s souls”.