Rishi Sunak has been forced to ditch plans to get the first flights to Rwanda off the ground by the end of spring, Downing Street has admitted.
No10 said the small boats policy has been hit by fresh delays after Lords refused to back down on changing the Rwanda bill, which has yet to be passed into law.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “The timetable that we had previously set out factored in plenty of time for parliamentary debate but obviously the bill has continued to be delayed.
“We will set out the timeline as soon as the bill passes through the House of Lords. The Lords did hold the bill up again last night, we are working at pace to get the bill passed and get flights off.”
Rwanda Bill remains stuck in deadlock after defiant peers on Wednesday dealt another blow in Parliament to the Prime Minister’s flagship asylum plan.
The proposed law aims to send some asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Kigali in order to deter people from crossing the English Channel in small boats.
The Bill and a treaty with Rwanda are intended to prevent further legal challenges to the stalled asylum scheme after the Supreme Court ruled the plan was unlawful.
As well as compelling judges to regard the east African country as safe, it would give ministers the power to ignore emergency injunctions.
But the House of Lords on Wednesday snubbed ministerial calls to back down and again insisted on revisions to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.
Despite MPs overturning previous changes by the upper chamber, peers renewed their demand that Rwanda cannot be treated as a safe country until an independent monitoring body has verified that protections contained in the treaty are implemented.
The provision would also allow the Secretary of State to effectively pull the plug on the scheme if the promised safeguards were not maintained.
In a further blow to the Government, peers again supported an exemption from removal for those who worked with the UK military or Government overseas, such as Afghan interpreters.
The Lords’ insistence on the amendments ensures a fourth round of “ping-pong” over the Bill, where legislation is batted between the two Houses until agreement is reached.
The draft law will be sent back to the Commons, where MPs are set to consider the latest changes on Monday.
Home Secretary James Cleverly accused Labour of a “politically cynical” effort to scupper the Rwanda plan.
But Labour said the Government should stop wasting time and money on the “hare-brained scheme”.
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