New Home Secretary James Cleverly faced an angry backlash from Tory MPs after he declared the government’s flagship Rwanda asylum policy not the "be all and end all" of plans to stop the small boats.
Mr Cleverly also called on people not to “fixate” on the controversial proposals, as he attempted to play them down a week after they were declared unlawful by the Supreme Court.
Rishi Sunak has promised to unveil a new treaty – and “emergency legislation” – he hopes will get planes to Rwanda in the air.
But he is under enormous pressure from MPs within his own party, including the former home secretary Suella Braverman, to ensure flights depart before the next election.
Mr Cleverly, who has had a bumpy few weeks in his new role, said he was frustrated at the focus on the Rwanda policy. Last week he failed to deny he had called it ‘bat****’. That row only intensified days later when he denied he had called Stockton a “****hole”, but admitted calling its Labour representative a “sh** MP”.
In an interview with the Times, Mr Cleverly said: "My frustration is that we have allowed the narrative to be created that this was the be all and end all."
"The mission is to stop the boats. That's the promise to the British people. Never lose sight of the mission.
"There are multiple methods. Don't fixate on the methods. Focus on the mission."
Mr Cleverly also went further than before on his reservations about any move to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
His comments provoked a backlash from Tory MPs.
Senior Tory John Redwood said: “The Home Secretary is sceptical about the Rwanda plan and does not want to strengthen UK law against foreign courts. So how is he going to stop the small boats? This is a criminal trade endangering lives.”
Former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Independent Rwanda was government policy “and it is customary for governments to be fixated on their own policies”.
The Tory right has clamoured for the UK to pull out of the treaty, seeing it as a major barrier to ending Channel crossings.
The most recent blow to the policy came from the UK Supreme Court. In their judgement justices also made clear that the ECHR was just one piece of legislation that led to their finding the policy was unlawful.
But Tories want to ensure that the ECHR and the Strasbourg court that rules on it will not prevent the policy from being implemented.
On the ECHR Mr Cleverly said: "My argument has always been that we need to modernise, update and reform.”
"What some people, I fear, do is jump to their preferred solution and hang on to that really, really tightly and say this cannot be the right answer unless you do a particular thing.
"I do not want to do anything that might undermine the key co-operation we have with countries [who] are very wedded to the ECHR for understandable reasons.
"Nothing is cost free. Everything needs to be considered, the advantages and disadvantages."
