'A betrayal of the people' - Dudley North Tory MP refuses to vote for PM's Rwanda bill
The majority of Black Country Conservative MPs helped Prime Minister Rishi Sunak win his crucial vote on his revamped Rwanda immigration bill.
However, Dudley North MP Marco Longhi refused to vote for the the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill which was passed by 313 votes to 269, with a majority 44.
Mr Longhi is part of the New Conservatives group, made up of Tory MPs elected after Brexit, and explained why he abstained in the vote.
Retweeting a statement from the leaders of the New Conservatives Miriam Cates MP and Danny Kruger MP, which said: "As MPs elected on a mandate to ‘Take Back Control’ we can’t vote for a Bill that fails to establish the superiority of our democratically-elected UK parliament over foreign courts."
Mr Longhi tweeted: "And it was this, above all else, what that the people voted for both in 2016 and then 2019.
’To deny this and sacrifice it on the altar of ‘international reputation’ while signalling some notion of altruism is a betrayal of the people."
No Conservatives voted against the Government, despite Westminster being in a febrile mood. In all 37 Conservatives MPs did not record a vote.
Lichfield MP Sir Michael Fabricant supported the bill hours after a date with the King in Windsor where he collected his knighthood.
He said: "I don't know how the vote's going to pan out, but as it's the second reading I will be voting for it because I agree with the principle, but it may have to be strengthened during the course of the committee stage."
However, Sir Michael might have missed the memo from other members of the European Research Group of MPs. The ERG chairman Mark Francois MP announced minutes before the vote he could not bring himself to support the bill which he believes will not have enough powers to ensure immigrants will finally be sent to the African country after years of planning and hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money spent.
