Rishi Sunak’s government was plunged into further crisis when the immigration minister quit just hours after the prime minister tabled a bill to save his Rwanda deportation policy.
Robert Jenrick stood down after it was revealed that the legislation did not allow the government to override the international laws that have stopped the government sending asylum seekers to central Africa.
In a letter published on X, the MP for Newark said Sunak’s bill was “a triumph of hope over experience” and will mean that the policy will be challenged again in the courts.
Jenrick’s resignation will be seen as a move to position himself as the head of the growing rightwing rebellion aimed at ensuring that the UK can act unilaterally and send flights to Kigali.
It comes just weeks after the former home secretary Suella Braverman was sacked and accused Sunak of “wishful thinking” to “avoid having to make hard choices” on immigration.
Jenrick, seen until recently as a close political ally of Sunak’s, wrote: “I am unable to take the currently proposed legislation through the Commons as I do not believe it provides us with the best possible chance of success.
“A bill of the kind you are proposing is a triumph of hope over experience. The stakes for the country are too high for us not to pursue the stronger protections required to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges which risk paralysing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent,” he said.
The emergency bill will give ministers the power to ignore some judgments that come from Strasbourg while stopping short of leaving or “disapplying” the European convention on human rights in its entirety.
Critics from the Conservative right have said that such a move raises the possibility that individual legal challenges will still be able to stop planes taking off for Rwanda.
Sunak thanked Jenrick for his efforts, but said his resignation was “disappointing”, telling him in a letter he fears it was “based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation”.
He said the bill was “the toughest piece of legislation ever put forward by a UK government” but ignoring the courts entirely would have meant Rwanda pulling out of the scheme. “There would be no point in passing a law that would leave us with nowhere to send people to.”
Confirmation of Jenrick’s resignation came earlier on Wednesday night as Cleverly presented the bill to MPs alongside Sunak but without Jenrick.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “We’ve got a home secretary making the statement, but the rumours are that the immigration minister has resigned. Where is he? Perhaps he can make that the first question that he answers – whether he still has an immigration minister in place.
“They’ve got open warfare among their backbenches, the starting gun fired on the next leadership election, and once again the whole country paying the price for this chaos.”
Cleverly initially declined to answer several requests for an explanation, but was then informed that the home office minister, Laura Farris, had confirmed Jenrick’s resignation on LBC.
The Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill stopped short of leaving the convention and does not include “notwithstanding clauses” which would allow ministers to ignore the ECHR and other international treaties in the area of asylum. (Guardian)