James Cleverly rejects claims Rwanda bill at risk of being killed off in Commons votes next year – UK politics live | Politics

Rishi Sunak’s favourability ratings have hit a new low, according to new polling by YouGov.

Rishi Sunak’s net favourability rating slips to a new low of -49 (fieldwork 11-12 Dec)

Favourable: 21% (-5 from 28-29 Nov)

Unfavourable: 70% (+5)

After a year as PM, Rishi Sunak’s net popularity has now fallen to the same level as his party (both -49)

By contrast, Keir Starmer currently stands at -22 and Labour at -14

Favourability of senior British politicians (11-12 Dec)

Keir Starmer: -22

James Cleverly: -29

Suella Braverman: -46

Jeremy Hunt: -47

Rishi Sunak: -49

*Politicians with >50% “don’t know” scores*

Rachel Reeves: -10

Wes Streeting: -11

Victoria Atkins: -15

Sadiq Khan has warned that ministers’ plans to cut legal migration will lead to a “full blown recruitment crisis” in London, with vacancies in hospitality alone still higher than they were pre-pandemic. Daniel Boffey has the story.

When Rishi Sunak announced that he would respond to the supreme court judgment saying the Rwanda deportation policy was unlawful with a new bill, he described it as emergency legislation, implying it would be rushed through parliament.

But that is not happening. Although the bill has had a second reading, its remaining Commons stages are not due to be debated until January. And, in an interview this morning, James Cleverly, the home secretary, said it would take “some time” for the bill to become law. He told Sky News:

We’ve got to get this bill through the House of Commons and the House of Lords. That will take some time … We’re going to move quickly but we’re going to make sure we get this right.

Good morning. James Cleverly, the home secretary, has been doing a victory lap media round this morning after the government’s bigger-than-expected win in the Rwanda bill vote last night. Tory rebels abstained, rather than voted against, and there were “only” 29 of them – which is barely enough to put the government’s majority at risk, and quite small in the scale of Tory rebellions over recent years.

But the jeopardy for Rishi Sunak is far from over. The rebels were only abstaining because they believe that they can get significant concessions to the bill when it is debated again over two days in January, and the gap between what the rightwingers are demanding (set out in the European Research Group’s legal “star chamber analysis) and the minimal tinkering Sunak seems to be offering is considerable. After the votes on amendments, there will be a final third reading vote on the bill as a whole and at that point some rightwingers say they will try to vote it down if they still don’t like it. Some Tory centrists have also said they will no longer vote for the bill if it’s been subject to an ERG rewrite.

That is why most of the front pages today claim the parliamentary threat to Sunak remains very real. When the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express all end up using more or less exactly the same headline, there’s a good chance it’s right.

And here are some other headlines on the same theme.

But in his interviews this morning Cleverly played down suggestions that the bill might be killed off in the new year. On Sky News Kay Burley asked him to respond to this comment from one unnamed Tory rebel quoted in reports this morning.

This bill has been allowed to live another day. But without amendments it will be killed next month. It is now up to the government to decide what it wants to do.

Cleverly did not accept the bill was at risk. Referring to Mark Francois, the chair of the European Research Groups, one of the rightwing Tory factions pushing for a tougher bill, he said:

I will talk to Mark and I’ll talk to others, of course, to understand their thinking on this and try to harvest their ideas to make things better.

But I can’t see if someone’s got a concern that the bill might not be as strong as they would like, killing the bill doesn’t strike me as the best way of doing that, because if the bill isn’t on the statute books it can’t possibly succeed.

He also rejected claims some of his Conservative colleagues don’t want the bill to work. He said:

No, this is absolutely wrong. The Conservative party is united on the desire to get this right and to stop the boats. The Labour party’s position is to try and wreck it.

I will post more from his interviews soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Michelle Donelan, the science secretary, gives evidence to the Commons science committee about AI governance and other matters.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

2.30pm: Michael Tomlinson, the minister for illegal migration, and Tom Pursglove, the minister for legal migration, give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.

4pm: Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.

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