Braverman says it will be ‘very clear’ to voters at next election if ‘stop the boats’ plan has worked – UK politics live

Good morning. When Rishi Sunak made five pledges in January, four of them looked relatively easy to meet, and one of them looked impossible. He promised to “pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed”.

Yesterday that new law was published, and, as Rajeev Syal and Kiran Stacey report, there was nothing in the text to persuade critics that they were wrong to assume that legal and other difficulties mean the policy won’t work.

Related: Rishi Sunak ‘extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in UK’

The conventional political response, when challenged about a promise that won’t or can’t be met, is to rely upon some smallprint opt-out. Sunak could say he is only promising to “pass laws”, not to “stop small boats”.

But this government has gone all in on making “stop the boats” the commitment, which raises two questions: when will it happen, and what does success mean? No more small boats at all? A dramatic reduction? Or just a modest reduction?

At his press conference last night Rishi Sunak did not define the target in precise terms, but he said “people will judge us on our results” and that “successes are stopping the boats”. Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and she was a bit more explicit. Asked if she would admit that she had failed if people were still crossing the Channel at the time of the next election (expected by next autumn), she told the Today programme:

It’s vital that we fix this problem. I think it’ll be very clear by the time of the next election whether we’ve succeeded or not.

Asked again if she was saying there would be no boats by the time of the next election, she again said:

It will be very clear whether we have succeeded or not.

The wording was interesting. Ministers want the plan to succeed, but there does seem to be a split between those who are very confident/hopeful that it will (like Sunak), and those who are less confident, but who think that if it does not work, the Tories can fight an election promising to withdraw Britain from the European convention on human rights. Braverman seems to be in the latter camp, and her answer to this question on the Today programme was consistent with this.

I will post more from her interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, gives evidence to the Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee about paramilitary activity.

9.45am: The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about Windrush. Other witnesses include David Neal, independent chief inspector of borders and immigration at 10.15am, and Lord Murray, a Home Office minister, at 11.15am.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

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