The immigration minister has declared he is “confident” that Rwanda deportation flights will begin before the next general election.

Robert Jenrick was speaking as James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, was expected to fly out to Rwanda to sign a revised treaty with the central African nation as soon as today in an attempt to kick-start the scheme after its defeat in the Supreme Court last month.

Asked “are you confident that planes will take off to Rwanda before the next election?”, Mr Jenrick told Sky: “I am. But we will need to do a few things to achieve that. The treaty that the Home Secretary is going to sign later today, I hope, will create a fundamentally different and better arrangement with the government of Rwanda that answers the concerns of the Supreme Court.

“And then we’re going to bring forward a piece of emergency legislation that will embed that in British UK law and go further to close some of the loopholes that bring spurious claims and prevent migrants being put on those planes.

“Together, I think this will enable us to get that plan running. This is a plan that is absolutely critical to getting numbers down.”

Mr Jenrick also insisted the Government would take “further steps” in addition to the measures announced by Mr Cleverly yesterday if needed to reduce net migration.

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