Rishi Sunak is braced for further battle in the Lords over his Bill to revive the Government’s Rwanda scheme as the legislation faces scrutiny from a number of prominent critics.

Some 71 members of the upper chamber are expected to speak at the second reading debate of the draft law on Monday. 

Among them is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has voiced profound concerns about the plan to send asylum seekers who cross the Channel in small boats on a one-way flight to Kigali.

Lord Carlile of Berriew, who earlier this month warned the Government is moving towards “totalitarianism” in its handling of the policy, is also due to appear.

The crossbench peer has suggested the Lords would seek to undo what he described as politicians “meddling” in the independent courts.

Mr Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda Bill survived third reading in the Commons after the Prime Minister saw off a Tory rebellion which had sought to toughen the legislation.

MPs on the right of the party largely backed down following speculation that the draft law could be torpedoed unless amendments were made, including to ensure UK and international law cannot be used to block a person’s removal to Rwanda. 

In the end just 11 Conservatives voted against the legislation but it faces a bigger test in the Lords, where many members have expressed unease about the plan.

The PM has urged peers against blocking “the will of the people” by opposing the Bill as he faces an election year having made “stopping the boats” a key pledge of his leadership.

But first blood was drawn in the Lords last week, when peers backed by 214 votes to 171 an unprecedented move seeking to delay a treaty with the east African nation which forms part of the Government’s plan.

The unelected second chamber backed calls for Parliament to not approve the pact until ministers can show the country is safe – though unlike the Commons, which has the power to delay ratification of a treaty, the Lords can only advise.

The asylum scheme comes with a £290 million bill but a series of legal challenges has meant no flights have taken off since it was first proposed in 2022, when Boris Johnson was in Number 10.

Under the plan, people who cross the Channel in small boats could be removed to Rwanda rather than being allowed to seek asylum in the UK.

The legislation, along with the recently signed treaty with Kigali, is aimed at ensuring the scheme is legally watertight after the Supreme Court ruling against it last year. Story By Nina Lloyd, Evening Standard

Are we in a crisis? The intricate web of the socio-economic challenges that we are facing today leaves us no room to answer the question any other way but in the affirmative.

As such, it is safe to say that our defining challenge is the ability to create an economic momentum that can sustainably help us put a material dent on poverty.Economic growth is the key through which a society unlocks opportunities, raises living standards and avails mass prosperity. It is more than abstract economic indices.

The fortunes of the citizens rise and fall on economic growth. When it falters, the sick have to put forward a visit to the doctor to the most dire of situations. The young miss out on education for their young minds and hearts. Inability to feed the hungry ultimately leads to malnutrition and a higher disease burden.

While it may be convenient to look back and point fingers, we must realise that the buck-passing will certainly not offer solutions to the people.

If anything, it does not set us apart from those who had the rare honour to preside over the benefit and costs of public policy but decided to increase their instead.

When public policy does not encourage productive capacity of citizens, then you know you are staring at a polity that is headed into an abyss. 

That is why besides the President’s pet projects of avoiding default while raising production, he may also want to focus more seriously on regional integration.

With a population of 238.7 million people, the East African Community provides a market so big that if we are to get our acts right, then a healthy competition which includes, but is not limited to removal of non-tariff barriers, will not only see emergence of thriving industries, but also help us deal with the problem of sovereign debt. 

This is how. Part of the reasons we are now drowning under the heavy weight of the sovereign debt is that our currency has weakened significantly against the dollar; the currency in which the debt was borrowed.

As at June 2024, we will spend 50 per cent more on debt repayment on account of the shilling’s depreciation alone.

If you compare Kenya’s debt situation and its advanced peers like Japan, which the previous administration liked to compare with whenever the debt to GDP ratio debate popped up, you realise that the comparison is of two very disparate scenarios. 

Japan has a huge export portfolio that earns it immense revenue in foreign exchange thus strengthening the Yen against other currencies. Japan, just like America, also pays its debt in its own currency.

If push came to shove, they can print themselves out of debt. The combined EAC economy under a common currency would literally awaken the sleeping economic giant that it is.

Secondly, that currency would stand up to other foreign currencies like the dollar and the pound.

The EAC common currency can then now become the means through which we pay our debts and not the shillings.

Free flow of capital within the community would also incentivise competition as consumers would be looking for high quality goods at affordable prices.

The resultant economic growth would provide the foothold with which to fight some of the seemingly intractable challenges facing the region such as radicalisation, triple planetary crisis and, the mounting disease burden.

A genuinely unified EAC on the economic front would then have the fiscal muscles to undertake major infrastructural projects without draining the close to 20 per cent of the GDP of one particular country in one infrastructural project without the buy in of neighbouring countries, thus rendering the project a white elephant as we did with our SGR.

May the uncertainties of these present times remind us, as citizens of the East Africa region, that we are better together.

We have dragged our feet for too long on the issue of common currency as well as on common market.

May we bring down the walls separating the community and set our people on the path to prosperity. By Kidi Mwaga, The Standard