James Cleverly to face crunch meeting with furious Tory MPs over small boats
PM to introduce emergency legislation after Rwanda plan rejected
Tory MPs are to demand answers from new Home Secretary James Cleverly over government policy on stopping the small boats and bringing down immigration in a crunch meeting tonight.
Mr Cleverly, who is just 15 days into his new role, has found himself at the heart of a furious row within the Conservatives over taking back control of Britain’s borders.
With a growing number of critics on the Tory backbenches, the Home Secretary has agreed to hold a special meeting at 7pm this evening to hear the concerns of MPs and provide a briefing on what he proposes to do.
Some MPs were upset that they had not received an invitation to the meeting but sources close to Mr Cleverly have confirmed it is open to any Tory MP who wants to get the briefing.
But the minister is now set to be pushed on what he plans to do about getting deportation flights to Rwanda off the ground and bringing down the record legal immigration figures.
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READ MORE: James Cleverly’s ’14 days of Hell’ in Tory civil war storm over small boats
A source close to Mr Cleverly has insisted that the meeting is “very normal MP engagement that he’s done since he joined Cabinet”.
The source added that claims it is an emergency meeting “is massively overegging it”.
However, there is no doubt that Mr Cleverly is facing a crisis in terms of his relationship with MPs, particularly on the right of the party who have accused him of being “too wet”.
Concerns have been raised after he used a newspaper interview to warn against “getting fixated” on the Rwanda solution to stopping the boats.
He has also repeated his opposition to leaving the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), first expressed in an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk when he was Foreign Secretary.
Already, government lawyers are briefing that trying to remove the effect of the ECHR on illegal immigration issues may cause further delays in the courts.
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After the Supreme Court blocked the Rwanda deportation flights, Mr Sunak promised “emergency legislation” to get the flights off the ground.
One Tory MP on the right told Express.co.uk that he will be asking “what the emergency legislation is and can we see it beforehand”.
One of the MP’s colleagues noted: “I think it is fair to assume it will not be as watertight as promised.”
Another MP said that he would attend but was not expecting to be enlightened.
The MP said: “We won’t hear anything.”
Another MP made it clear that last week’s record immigration figures will also be on the unofficial agenda.
The MP said: “I want to know when we will be able to demonstrate we can get numbers down if it is not too late before the next general election.
“Really this should have been done a year ago.”
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