Rwanda migrant deportation flights could take WEEKS to start even after new bill becomes law with only a few hundred going to east Africa before the summer – as MPs push Lords to let legislation pass by Wednesday

Migrant deportation flights to Rwanda may not take off for weeks even if a new law designed to get them off the ground as soon as possible is passed this week.

Whitehall officials believe it will take six weeks for the first aircraft to head for east Africa once all legal challenges have been exhausted, with 150 deportees expected to be handed notice letters this week.

But that first flight could be the first for some time, The Times reports that the government in Kigali wants a pause after it lands in order to make sure the system is working properly. 

A source told the paper: ‘It’ll take them two months to process and move out of the reception centre, but then they will be able to take more and be able to process them quicker.’ 

It means that regular flights may not start until late summer at the earliest, with the first arrivals due to be hosted in a hostel with a capacity of 200.

It comes as MPs and peers begin what is expected to begin several days of Parliamentary ‘ping-ping’ over the legislation, after the House of Lords made a series of amendments.

It means that regular flights may not start until late summer at the earliest, with the first arrivals due to be hosted in a hostel with a capacity of 200 (pictured)

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which seeks to compel judges to regard the east African country as safe in a bid to clear the way to send some asylum seekers on a one-way flight there.

It is designed to deport Channel migrants to the east African country within days of their arrival in the UK.

Ministers believe it will break the business model of the people smuggling gangs. It has been mired in legal challenges for two years, but the new legislation will declare Rwanda a safe country and severely limit the scope for courts to intervene.

The Commons will on Monday get a chance to debate and vote on amendments passed by the House of Lords.

Peers voted by majorities of more than 100 votes on a series of changes to the Bill earlier this month, with the size of the defeats the biggest to have been suffered by Rishi Sunak as PM.

But Home Secretary James Cleverly said that blocking the bill only helped people smugglers who risked peoples lives while making huge sums of money cramming migrants into rickety boats to cross from France.

Peers supported a move to ensure the controversial Bill is fully compliant with domestic and international law.

They also demanded that Parliament cannot declare Rwanda a safe country for housing asylum seekers until a new treaty with Kigali is fully implemented.

In a further change, the Lords voted in  favour of establishing a monitoring mechanism able to determine whether the safeguards in the treaty have been, and continue to be, fully implemented.

Labour is expected to oppose the government again, with Sir Keir Starmer pledging to scrap the Rwanda scheme even if it is shown to be working.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday accused the Tories of overseeing ‘chaos, collapsing confidence and calamitous costs’ in the immigration and asylum system She said that a new returns and enforcement unit was needed to accelerate work on removals and fix processing issues.

It will work to identify, shut down and punish workplaces that are illegally employing and exploiting asylum seekers and co-operate with the police on arresting traffickers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from hotels.

Officers from the unit will also be posted to foreign countries to negotiate more returns agreements.

The unit will be backed with a new fast-track asylum casework system for safe countries so arrivals can be processed and returned within weeks.

Labour said the team will be funded through savings made from clearing the asylum backlog and ending the use of hotels to house migrants, currently costing taxpayers £8 million a day.