It was a small victory, but one that Rishi Sunak was keen to celebrate. On Thursday, January 18, the British prime minister called journalists to Downing Street to announce that his "Rwanda Security" bill had finally passed its third reading in the House of Commons the previous evening. Some 60 MPs from his own Conservative party had tried to amend the bill to make it stronger, arguing that it was not tough enough as it stood. But this rebellion from the Tory backbenchers did not ultimately have the strength to vote against the measure.

Delivering a brief speech behind a narrow podium with the slogan "Stop the boats," Sunak declared that he "has a plan," based on this piece of legislation, to limit migrant arrivals from the Belgian and French coasts – some 30,000 people made the crossing in 2023. Ultimately, the bill should make operational the agreement signed with Kigali almost two years ago, to transfer asylum seekers arriving to the United Kingdom in "small boats" to Rwanda, so that their claims can be processed there and accepted, or not, by the East African country. This agreement is "an essential deterrent" to limit illegal immigration and "take back control of our borders," insisted the prime minister.

However, the main purpose of his press briefing was to put pressure on the House of Lords, which will now examine, amend and then pass the bill. "There is now only one question. Will the [Labour] opposition in the appointed House of Lords try and frustrate the will of the people as expressed by the elected House? Or will they get on board and do the right thing?" Sunak asked rhetorically. With the Tories lacking a majority in the upper house of Westminster, and this body being made up of a large number of lawyers, the game looks set to be a complicated one.

This bill is more at odds with British constitutional provisions and the international obligations of the UK, a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (signed in Geneva in 1951), than previous Conservative migration laws. The bill was rushed through Downing Street at the end of 2023, with the controversial aim of circumventing a November 2023 ruling by the UK Supreme Court declaring deportations of asylum seekers to Rwanda unlawful.

The country's highest court did not reject the principle of processing asylum applications by a third country, but it did rule that Rwanda is not a "safe" country, stressing the high risk of asylum seekers being sent back to their country of origin by Kigali.

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