The Home Office will offer “no more concessions” on the illegal migration bill, a government source has told the Guardian, after peers made numerous changes to plans designed to tackle the small boats issue.
The House of Lords voted to reinstate provisions to the bill that were removed by MPs earlier in the week.
In a series of votes that went on until the early hours of Thursday, peers inflicted nine defeats on the government – triggering “ping pong”, meaning the draft legislation will go back to the Commons next week.
Ministers hope the bill will be passed before the summer recess, which starts next Friday.
More late-night sittings and marathon voting sessions lasting several hours are expected next week as wrangling continues over the Lords amendments – which are backed by figures including Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury.
MPs will debate the bill again on Monday, with the government expected to strip out the Lords amendments. However, unlike on Tuesday, when the Home Office backed down on several key issues, a government source said they would not give ground.
“There will be no more concessions,” they said. “It won’t be us who blinks again.”
Suella Braverman was on Thursday given the go-ahead to take a legal battle over the government’s Rwanda removal policy to the supreme court. The move was widely expected, as the home secretary wants to overturn a ruling by the court of appeal last month that found the plan was unlawful.
In a statement, she said: “I absolutely believe this policy is lawful” and that the UK needed “innovative solutions … to stop the boats, break the business model of the people-smuggling gangs and prevent further loss of life in the Channel”.
In the face of the Lords amendments and criticism from some Tory MPs, including the former prime minister Theresa May, the government agreed this week to ditch plans to backdate migrant removals to March, when the draft legislation was first introduced to parliament.
Speaking in the Lords on Wednesday night, Welby warned against immigration and asylum being used as a “wedge issue to divide things”.
He challenged the government to back all the latest amendments, which include his own push for ministers to draw up a 10-year strategy for collaborating internationally on refugees and human trafficking to the UK.
Welby said: “The issue of immigration and asylum … is an extraordinarily divisive one. This is a massive international issue on a generational basis and it needs profound thinking on a long-term basis in order to tackle it.”
The archbishop was supported by David Blunkett, the Labour former home secretary, who said a decade-long strategy was needed, instead of one “geared to a general election”.
Other changes to the bill by peers included protections for LGBT people facing deportation and a move to require the consideration of asylum claims from migrants arriving by unauthorised routes, if they have not been removed from the UK within six months.
Critics of the illegal migration bill claim it will be ineffectual at stopping the small boats crisis, and is a cynical piece of legislation designed to exploit a heated issue for political gain by prompting staunch opposition by Labour and the House of Lords.
The government believes that the bill is a key part of Rishi Sunak’s effort to deter people from making the dangerous Channel crossing.
Ministers say its aim is to prevent people claiming asylum in the UK if they arrive through unauthorised means and ensure their prompt removal, either to their home country or a third country.
Christopher Bellamy, a justice minister in the Lords, said Welby’s amendment for a 10-year strategy was “not necessary because the government is well aware of the need to develop a strategy and to cooperate with international partners”.
And Simon Murray, a Home Office minister, said the move to consider the asylum claims of people not removed within six months could lead to more people trying to “game the system” by launching spurious claims to run down the clock.
Sunak claimed in a speech on 5 June that “our approach is working”.
However, statistics published the following month showed that June was a record month for small boat crossings, with 3,824 people making the trip – more than any in June since records began five years ago.
