Ministers are preparing for a major clash with the House of Lords after peers inflicted a series of damaging defeats on the government’s flagship immigration crackdown.
A total of 11 amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill were passed by the Lords on Monday night, on top of four more government defeats last week.
The bill is aimed at giving ministers the power to deport asylum seekers who arrive in the UK via illegal routes, such as in small boats across the Channel.
Among the measures passed by peers are a limit on the time that children and pregnant women can be detained, and preventing LGBTQ+ people from being deported to a country where they would have a well-founded fear of persecution.
Another amendment to the bill would to force home secretary Suella Braverman to consider an asylum claim from someone who has not been removed from the UK within six months.
Lord Carlile, a former Lib Dem MP who now sits as a crossbench peer, told Radio 4′s Today programme: “The bill should be dead because the purpose of the bill is dead.”
But Downing Street said ministers will now seek to overturn the changes when the bill returns to the House of Commons.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “We remain committed to stopping the boats and to do that we need to make it clear that if you come here illegally you will be removed to a safe country.
″[The bill] was voted through by the Commons and we remain committed to defending it robustly.”