Peers pass four amendments inserting safeguards into bill, including exempting migrants who helped British troops

Good morning. It is now more than five months since Rishi Sunak promised “emergency” legislation to address the supreme court judgment saying the government’s Rwanda deportation policy was unlawful. It has not proceeded at the pace of normal emergency legislation, but the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill is now expected to clear parliament within the next 24/36 hours, and it should become law by the end of the week. (It does not became law until the king grants royal assent, and it can take a few hours to get Charles to sign the relevant bit of paper.)

But before parliamentary officials can send the bill to the Palace, the Commons and the Lords have to agree, and there are still four outstanding issues unresolved. Last night peers passed four amendments inserting safeguards into the bill. They would:

The problem is, we have no evidence that Rwanda is safe. All the evidence that is put before us demonstrates that at the moment it is not. The supreme court said in November it wasn’t safe. We signed a treaty with Rwanda which was supposed to remedy the defects, and this Act will come into force when the treaty comes into force. But even the treaty itself accepts that signing the treaty doesn’t make Rwanda safe.

All this amendment would say is that, instead of us in parliament in London being expected to assert in legislation that Rwanda is safe, when the evidence is including, from the government itself last night, that it isn’t currently safe, it’s a work in progress – instead of having to sign up to that untruth, the government would invite the monitoring committee to certify that Rwanda is safe and when it is safe, the flights can begin.

And should by any chance Rwanda ever cease to be a safe country, well the monitoring committee should say that as well.

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With a heavy focus on deterrence, the agreement shows how far Europe’s centre has shifted to the right

The Oscar-nominated Io Capitano , now showing in cinemas, is a sensitive and moving portrait of the trials faced by two teenage boys as they attempt to reach Europe, via unofficial migration routes, from their homes in Senegal. The film is unsparing in its depiction of the violence and danger they face along the way – but what it doesn’t show is how the boys’ journey is shaped by European border policy from almost the moment they set off.

Their first stop, the people-smuggling hub of Agadez, Niger, is the capital of a country into which the EU has poured millions of euros in recent years to combat smuggling. It hasn’t halted the trade entirely, but it has forced it further underground. In Libya, where the boys are tortured and trafficked by armed gangs, European governments have striven to keep migrants in place – as painstakingly documented by Sally Hayden in her recent book My Fourth Time, We Drowned – despite the dire threat to their safety.

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Rishi Sunak braced for fresh round of wrangling over plan that is due to cost taxpayers £1.8m per deportee

• UK politics – latest updates

The number of people travelling by small boat to seek asylum in the UK hit a new daily high for 2024 at the weekend, figures show, as Rishi Sunak braces for a fresh round of parliamentary wrangling over the Rwanda deportation bill.

Unions and charities are preparing to mount legal challenges if the bill, which is meant to stop the boats, passes into law this week.

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As the war in Sudan moves into its second year , 1,000 refugees a day continue to cross its southern border. Within the small town of Renk in South Sudan, a rapidly growing refugee population faces desperate shortages of water, food and shelter. For many, South Sudan marks a return to a land they thought they had left behind, having fled the country after civil war broke out in 2013. Now new fighting in their adopted country has forced them back again

• UK Foreign Office holding secret talks with Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group

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Italian coastguard rescues 22 survivors trying to cross Mediterranean and searches for missing

Nine people, including a baby, have died after their boat capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean in stormy weather and another 15 people are feared missing, Italy’s coastguard has said.

The Italian coastguard said on Thursday it had received a cooperation request from Maltese search and rescue after the boat capsized about 30 miles (50km) south-east off the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday.

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Long-awaited package of measures marks victory for Europe’s centre albeit with ‘doubts and concerns’ over implementation

Almost a decade in the making, the EU’s new migration and asylum pact suffered so many setbacks, stalemates and rewrites that when member states finally announced a deal last year, its passage through parliament seemed assured.

That was, however, to ignore the objections of Europe’s resurgent far-right parties, who felt it was not tough enough (and, perhaps, hoped to profit at the ballot box from allowing the current chaos around migration to continue).

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European parliament president says ‘history made’ with vote to pass changes, which have been criticised by NGOs

• Europe live – latest updates

Sweeping changes to the EU’s migration laws have been passed in a knife-edge series of votes in the European parliament, with supporters of the new laws calling the move historic but NGOs saying they are a step back for human rights.

The vote on Wednesday, which is now expected to be rubber-stamped by the member states, ends eight years of deadlock over repeated efforts to tighten up border management and asylum processes in the 27-member bloc.

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MEPs asked to vote on more than 10 different bills aiming at reforming incoherent migration laws across bloc, amid criticism from Left group

Malin Björk from the Swedish Left Party said the vote will not resolve problems, and that the Left group will not be supporting it.

There is no real solidarity, and there will be more of what is not working, she said. There will be detention, dehumanisation, violence, humiliation, she added.

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Proponents of legislation for bloc say it will take away far-right arguments but critics claim the opposite

The European parliament is to vote on Wednesday on sweeping new laws to overhaul its migration policy amid renewed criticism that it is feeding the agenda of the extreme right rather than protecting vulnerable people.

Ylva Johansson, the home affairs commissioner who was the driving force behind the legislation, said on Tuesday that with the reforms aimed at “managing migration in an orderly way”, the 27-member bloc was taking a step towards neutralising the populist far right.

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