Further delay to Rwanda bill’s passage as Lords vote through amendments – as it happened

• The government suffered two defeats on Wednesday in the House Lords over its Safety of Rwanda bill. Peers voted to accept Motion D1 which adds an exemption to the removal to Rwanda for people who have supported the UK armed forces and their families. The contents voted 247, the not contents 195, meaning the Bill will be sent back to the Commons for debate once again. Earlier, Downing Street said it would not be offering concessions.

• Peers also voted to accept Motion B1 which would reinstate the Lords amendment on a monitoring committee to decide when Rwanda is safe. The contents voted 245, the not contents 208.

• Labour said it remains “completely confident” that Angela Rayner has complied with all rules after the chief constable of Greater Manchester police said she was facing investigation “over a number of assertions knocking about”. Keir Starmer told MPs he believed the accusation that Rayner lied about her primary residence to avoid tax was a “smear”.

• James Daly, the deputy chair of the Conservative party, wrote to Greater Manchester police asking them to investigate Angela Rayner and, when the force initially declined to look into it, he successfully persuaded them to think again. But in media interviews, Daly refused to say what he thinks Rayner did wrong

• Labour said it is “deeply concerning” that Rishi Sunak refused to rule out cutting the NHS or pensions, or putting up taxes, to fund his £46bn long-term plan to abolish national insurance in a statement after PMQs.

Peers have voted to accept Motion D1.

The contents voted 247, the not contents 195, meaning the Bill will be sent back to the Commons for debate once again.

Peers have voted to accept Motion B1.

The contents voted 245, the not contents 208.

The Rwanda bill may not become law until next week. MPs had expected the “ping pong” process to conclude late this evening, or tomorrow, but if the House of Lords does not accept the government’s version of the bill tonight, ministers are now expected to delay its return to the House of Commons (the next round of “ping pong”) until Monday next week, the Guardian has been told.

MPs have now voted down all four amendments to the Rwanda bill inserted by the House of Lords yesterday. The government won the last two votes by 310 votes to 240, and by 302 votes to 244.

The bill is now going back to the Lords, where peers will debate it again at around 6pm.

Peers are not expected to back down tonight, and they are likely to hold votes on reinserting at least one of their safeguards back into the bill, and possibly two. The two priorities are letting the monitoring committee decide whether Rwanda is safe, and exempting Afghans who helped British troops from deportation to Rwanda. (See 9.55am.)

Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, criticised the government for rejecting the four Lords amendment. He was particularly critical of what Tomlinson said about Afghans who served with British troops. (See 3.03pm.) He said Britain owed these people a debt of honour and gratidute. “The idea that we might send them to Rwanda is simply unconscionable,” he said.

And this is what Tomlinson said about the Lords amendment that would exempt Afghans who have served with British forces in Afghanistan from deportation to Rwanda. He said:

This government recognises the commitment and responsibility that comes with combat veterans, whether our own or those who have shown courage by serving alongside us … We will not let them down.

Section four of the Illegal Migration Act enables the secretary of state to specify categories of persons to whom the duty to remove will not apply.

And, once the United Kingdom’s special forces Arap review … has concluded, the government will consider how to revisit our immigration legislation and how it will apply to those who will be eligible as a result of the review.

In response to a question about why people should believe that this review will make any difference, Tomlinson said Rishi Sunak had a veterans minister, Johnny Mercer, sitting at the cabinet table, and James Cleverly, the home secretary, was a veteran too. “We will not let them [veterans and people who worked with them] down,” he said.

In the Commons MPs are now debating the latest Lords amendments to the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill.

As Rajeev Syal reports, there were suggestions this mornin that the government might offer concessions intended to allow Afghans who served with British troops in Afghanistan to be exempt from deportation to Rwanda. This is one of two issues on which peers are most reluctant to back down. (See 9.55am.)

But, at the post-PMQs No 10 lobby briefing, Downing Street said it would not be offering concessions. A spokesperson said:

We’re not considering concessions. We believe that the bill as it stands is the right way forward.

On the issue of Afghans who served with British forces, the spokesperson said:

We’ve already offered a number of safe and legal routes to the UK for individuals in that category. The UK government offer under Arap (Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy) is one of the most generous of any country, and we’re proud to have relocated over 16,000 people to safety in the UK in the scheme so far.

James Daly, the deputy chair of the Conservative party, wrote to Greater Manchester police asking them to investigate Angela Rayner and, when the force initially declined to look into it, he successfully persuaded them to think again.

But in interviews Daly has refused to say what he thinks Rayner did wrong. He did this yesterday on Politics Live, and again today on Sky News.

In another interview on Radio 4’s the World at One, Daly defended his refusal to say what he was alleging. He said, now that the police have decided to investigate, he thought it was preferable to allow them to get on with their job.

Labour has said it is “deeply concerning” that Rishi Sunak refused to rule out cutting the NHS or pensions, or putting up taxes, to fund his £46bn long-term plan to abolish national insurance. In a statement after PMQs, Pat McFadden, the party’s national campaign coordinator, said:

The prime minister was given three chances today to rule out cuts to the NHS, cuts to the state pension or income tax increases to pay for his completely unfunded £46bn plan to scrap national insurance. It will be deeply concerning for the whole country that he pointedly refused to do so.

In the week when Liz Truss has been busy reminding everyone of the consequences of unfunded Tory promises, the British public deserve answers. It’s time for Rishi Sunak to come clean and stop avoiding the question on everyone’s lips: how is he going to pay for it?

Political aficionados tend to love general elections, but in some respect there’s a good reason to dread them too. At the moment when the policy debate should be at its most enlightening, it degenerates. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former political strategist, once said that his policy for winning was to “flood the zone with shit”. That is a bit extreme as a description of today’s PMQs, but not by much.

Keir Starmer started with Liz Truss, and then for most of PMQs sought to resume the attack over Sunak’s long-term £46bn plan to abolish national insurance, which Labour (quite reasonably) argues would require either massive spending cuts or tax increases. But, in his very first response, Sunak threw the Angela Rayner story on the table and from then on he just blasted back with a hail of smear and negativity. Of course, this is not unprecendented. PMQs is like this much of the time. But today it felt excessive, and linked to the imminent arrival of the local elections next month, and the general election soon.

Starmer must have been expecting Sunak to attack him over Rayner. He had a response (see 12.06pm) where he said something about how a “billionaire prime minister” was “smearing a working-class woman” – but I don’t have the full quote because Tory MPs were shouting so loudly it was impossible to hear what he was saying. His strongest rebuttal line on this story was drowned out.

In the rest of his response, Sunak deployed the full gamut of CCHQ attack lines against Labour: Wales, Corbyn, Birmingham, taxes etc. But it was quite suprising to hear him claim: “A few weeks ago [Starmer] finally admitted it to The Sun, what did he say he would do? I quote, he said ‘we would put up taxes’.” The Tories have also been running this seven-second clip on social media, but it is a textbook example of selective quotation dishonesty. What Starmer actually said was: “We are going to put up taxes, we’ve already said that, in relation to the VAT on private schools, the non-dom tax status, some of the loopholes that we’ve identified … we do not want to see an increase on tax for working people.”

To be fair to Sunak, within the context of PMQs (judging it according to its own “rules”, and by how it is perceived by MPs) all this worked for him very well, and he saw off Starmer quite easily. His first response was an effective pivot to the Rayner story.

All I would say is [Starmer] ought to spend a bit less time reading that book and a bit more time reading the deputy leader’s [Angela Rayner] tax advice.

This was not Oscar Wilde, but in Commons terms it counts as high wit. His later jibe about Hizb ut-Tahrir (see 12.19pm) was crude and unfair, but punchy and memorable too.

There must be a better way of holding prime ministers to account. But, if Starmer wins the next election, he does not seem inclined to try to find one. In his new biography, Tom Baldwin quotes Starmer as saying of PMQs: “It is what it is and I don’t see any prospect of it changing any time soon.”

Starmer says the Tories have been smearing a working-class woman.

He says Truss blames everyone, including the “poor old lettuce”, who she claims was part of the deep state.

It is not clear if Starmer is quoting the book, or the Daily Star splash.

Sunak says people would pay more tax under Labour.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

You’ve got a billionaire prime minister … whose family has used schemes to avoid millions of pounds’ worth of tax, smearing a working-class woman.

PMQs is starting soon.

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Labour has said it remains “completely confident” that Angela Rayner has complied with all rules, after the chief constable of Greater Manchester police said she was facing investigation “over a number of assertions knocking about”, Aletha Adu reports.

The NatCon conference featuring Nigel Farage, Suella Braverman and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, among its speakers is resuming today after a Brussels court overturned a local mayor’s decision to close it down. Lisa O’Carroll has the story.

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David Cameron, the foreign secretary, has said that Israel is gearing up to retaliate after the mass Iranian drone and missile attack launched on Saturday night.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem this morning, where he has meetings scheduled with senior figures including Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, Cameron said:

It’s right to have made our views clear about what should happen next, but it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act. We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible. And in a way that, as I said yesterday, is smart as well as tough.

But the real need is to refocus back on Hamas, back on the hostages, back on getting the aid in, back on getting a pause in the conflict in Gaza.

On Monday Cameron was urging the Israelis not to retaliate, saying they should “take the win” and not do anything to escalate the conflict.

Martin Belam has more coverage of this on his Middle East crisis live blog.

The UK’s annual inflation rate fell by less than expected in March to 3.2%, complicating the timing of a first Bank of England interest rate cut, Richard Partington reports.

But that has not stopped Rishi Sunak claiming the latest figures show his economic policy is working. In a clip for broadcasters he said:

Today’s figures show that after a tough couple of years, our economic plan is working and inflation continues to fall.

Having been 11% when I became prime minister, it’s now fallen to just over 3%, the lowest level in two-and-a-half years.

We have also seen energy bills falling, mortgage rates falling and, just this week, data showed people’s wages have been rising faster than inflation for nine months in a row.

My simple message would be: if we stick to the plan, we can ensure that everyone has a brighter future.

Graeme Wearden has more reaction to the inflation figures on his business live blog.

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:

1) Include a provision making explicit that the bill has to be enforced in accordance with international law.

2) Ensure that Rwanda cannot be treated as a safe country until the independent monitoring committee has confirmed that it is safe, and also give the committee the right to say if Rwanda no longer remains a safe country.

3) Allow officials to rule that Rwanda is not safe for particular asylum seekers.

4) Exempt people who have worked for the British army in countries like Afghanistan from deportation to Rwanda.

Normally the “ping pong” process, when a bill is shuttling between the Lords and the Commons as the two sides try to reach agreement, ends with peers capitulating, and the government getting its way. Peers are not elected and, although in theory they can block a bill at this point, most of them think they do not have the democratic right to do that.

But with some bills peers hold out for as long as possible in the hope of securing a last-minute concession, and this morning there are signs that they are going to keep pushing a bit more on at least two of the issues – 2) and 4).

On the Today programme David Anderson, a crossbench peer and the former independent reviewer of terrorist legislation for the government, confirmed that members of the Lords felt particularly strongly about these issues.

On protection for asylum seekers who have helped the British army [point 4)], Anderson pointed out that the majority in the Lords in favour of this last night was particularly large – 57 votes. The Labour party is focusing on this issue, and this morning Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, retweeted a letter from colleagues urging the government to back down on this point.

But Anderson said he felt particularly strongly about point 2), which he said addressed the “lie” at the centre of the bill, the claim that Rwanda is a safe country. He said the bill as drafted says Rwanda will be judged as safe “for all time” and that “there is simply no mechanism to change it”. He went on:

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.

Anderson said the “very modest” amendment being pushed by the Lords would say Rwanda will only be considered safe when the government’s monitoring committee confirms that. He said its members were handpicked by the government and included Alexander Downer, a former Australian foreign minister who is a “great proponent of the offshoring of asylum seekers”. Anderson went on:

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.

Anderson also said any amendments that might have delayed the bill, or blocked it, had been dropped by the Lords.

Here is the agenda for the day.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

After 12.45pm: MPs debate on the latest Lords amendments to the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill. There are four Lords amendments the government wants to vote down and the divisions will take place after a debate lasting up to an hour.

Afternoon: Peers are expected to vote again on the Rwanda bill.

Also, David Cameron is in Israel, where he is due to meet a range of leaders, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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