Immigration minister Robert Jenrick quits and attacks Sunak migration policy

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has resigned, just hours after the Government unveiled a new Rwanda deportation bill that stopped short of meeting demands from right-wing Tories.

The junior Home Office minister, who has become an increasingly hardline figure on immigration and asylum issues, said he “cannot continue in my position when I have such strong disagreements with the direction of the Government’s policy on immigration” after the weaker-than-desired bill.

In his resignation letter, Mr Jenrick said he had pushed “for the strongest possible piece of emergency legislation to ensure that under the Rwanda policy we remove as many small boat arrivals, as swiftly as possible,” telling Mr Sunak: “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.”

Mr Jenrick added: “I refuse to be yet another politician who makes promises on immigration to the British public but does not keep them.”

He was reported to have quit while his boss, Home Secretary James Cleverly, was on his feet introducing the emergency Rwanda bill in Parliament.

Mr Cleverly, facing heckling from Labour MPs over the absent Mr Jenrick’s whereabouts, also indicated that the minister had resigned.

“That has been confirmed… of course I speak with the ministers in the department regularly, but ultimately the question in this session should be about the bill rather than individuals in this house,” he said.

Mr Jenrick is understood to have worked closely with Mr Cleverly and Rishi Sunak on the details of the Rwanda legislation in recent days, and was seen as securing a significant political victory just days ago when the Government announced a crackdown on legal migration.

Mr Cleverly told the Commons he “values” the work of Mr Jenrick and that he had been “instrumental” to driving down migration.

The new bill introduced on Wednesday is intended to revive plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda without their case being heard, weeks after the High Court ruled that the plans cooked up by Suella Braverman were illegal.

The bill attempts to define Rwanda in law as a “safe country” and asserts that decisions cannot be challenged on human rights grounds – but hardline Tories including Ms Braverman had called for it to go much further in directly disapplying the European Convention on Human Rights.

The issue, which the Conservatives are likely to put at the core of their election strategy next year, has stoked divisions in the party, with Rishi Sunak facing the threat of rebellions from both moderates and the Tory right.

Rumours of Mr Jenrick’s resignation swirled as he was absent from the Government benches during Mr Cleverly’s statement – with one Labour MP heckling “Where is the minister?”

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told the Commons: “This is total chaos in the Government and in the Conservative Party. This is the desperate dying days of a party ripping itself apart, clearly totally out of ideas, lost any sense of leadership or direction.

“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.”

Meanwhile, right-wing Tories also pressed attacks.

Tory right-winger Chris Chope questioned whether the government would be “inhibited” on the issue by Mr Jenrick’s departure, while Mark Francois said he was “deeply worried” by the resignation.

Another Tory hardliner, Andrea Jenkyns, said on X that the resignation “may be the death knell for Sunak’s leadership” as the party struggles with flatlining poll numbers.

The Prime Minister said the legislation will ensure his flagship asylum scheme “cannot be stopped” as he battles the issue of small boat crossings of the Channel.

“Through this new landmark emergency legislation we will control our borders, deter people taking perilous journeys across the channel and end the continuous legal challenges filling our courts,” Mr Sunak said.

“And we will disapply sections of the Human Rights Act from the key parts of the Bill, specifically in the case of Rwanda, to ensure our plan cannot be stopped.”

More to follow