Rwanda vote will not be treated as matter of confidence in Rishi Sunak’s leadership, says minister

Published

11 months ago

December 7, 2023

admin

A vote on Rishi Sunak’s emergency Rwanda bill should not be seen as a matter of confidence in his leadership, a government minister has said.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris told Sky News he believed “all Conservatives” would vote for the bill when it is put to the Commons next week – despite it not having the support of Robert Jenrick, who dramatically resigned from his role as immigration minister on Wednesday night.

The minister sought to play down Tory divisions over the bill in the wake of Mr Jenrick’s resignation.

Follow live: Boris Johnson says Eat Out to Help Out not a ‘gamble’

Asked if the vote on the bill would be treated as a matter of confidence in the Mr Sunak’s leadership, Mr Heaton-Harris said that was a decision for the whips but added: “I can’t see why it would need to be because I think all Conservatives will vote for it.”

“The policy of stopping the boats is something that actually does unite the Conservative Party,” he said.

“There’s elements in this bill where people would like to go further… there’s also people that say this goes too far.

“I actually think this bill strikes the right balance. It is a really strong group of measures to try and stop the boats in a completely legal and justifiable way.

“And I think it will work.”

Mr Jenrick, who has increasingly taken a hardline stance on migration issues, quit the frontbench on Wednesday evening, saying he could not continue in his position when he had such “strong disagreements” over the bill – which he branded a “triumph of hope over experience”.

On Thursday morning Mr Jenrick was replaced with two individuals after the government carved the role into Minister for Illegal Migration and Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery.

Michael Tomlinson was appointed Minister for Illegal Migration while Tom Pursglove was moved into the post of Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery.

Robert Courts is now the new solicitor general after Mr Tomlinson was moved from the role.

The government published its long-awaited Rwanda bill just a day after Home Secretary James Cleverly visited Rwanda to sign a new treaty that was aimed at reviving the government’s troubled plan to send asylum seekers to the African country.

The bill compels UK judges to treat the east African nation as a safe country for asylum seekers after the Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful on the grounds people could be returned to their home countries and face harm, under a process known as refoulement.

The bill was designed to appease both wings of the Conservative Party – the right wing and the more moderate One Nation group – by allowing the UK to “disapply” aspects of the Human Rights Act but not the legislation in its entirety.

The Tory right, including Mr Jenrick and former home secretary Suella Braverman, wanted the bill to disregard the entire Human Rights Act with regard to asylum cases as well as include extra powers to dismiss challenges under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

Mr Sunak made clear in his response to Mr Jenrick’s resignation later that Rwanda was at risk of walking away from the agreement if the bill ignored the European Court of Human Rights in its entirety.

Politics

NY Supreme Court allows Greenidge to keep mining, but challenges remain

Published

3 hours ago

November 15, 2024

admin

NY Supreme Court allows Greenidge to keep mining, but challenges remain

The state Department of Environmental Conservation botched the permitting process, but it still gets a do-over.

Politics

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

3 hours ago

November 15, 2024

admin

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the three month period.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Am I satisfied with the numbers published today? Of course not. I want growth to be stronger, to come sooner, and also to be felt by families right across the country.”

“It’s why in my Mansion House speech last night, I announced some of the biggest reforms of our pension system in a generation to unlock long term patient capital, up to £80bn to help invest in small businesses and scale up businesses and in the infrastructure needs,” Ms Reeves later told Sky News in an interview.

“We’re four months into this government. There’s a lot more to do to turn around the growth performance of the last decade or so.”

New economy data tests chancellor’s growth plan

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.