Small Boats Bill torn up in Lords as peers say government lives 'in cloud cuckoo clock country'

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The government's plans to tackle the small craft crisis have been dealt a blow in the House of Lords with peers demanding 11 key changes.

< p>Several defeats were inflicted by peers on Monday, with members backing amendments limiting the detention of children and pregnant women, inserting protections for LGBT+ asylum seekers and requiring asylum claims to be reviewed for anyone not deported within six months.

Further revisions would include protections for victims of modern slavery and remove barriers to legal challenges to deportation.

This comes as peers have accused the government of living in 'cloudy cuckoo country' as it continues to push forward its bill to deport asylum seekers who arrive in the county illegally although they have nowhere to send them.

Several members of the House of Lords have called for the Illegal Migration Bill, which aims to detain and deport all migrants in small boats, to be withdrawn in light of last week's Court of Appeal ruling that the Rwanda deal is illegal.

A minister has previously told his peers that Rwanda is the only country where the UK had "an agreement with this country to take it back", although the government hoped to reach similar agreements with other nations.

But it continues to support laws that seek to allow the Home Office to detain and deport all small boat migrants regardless of claims for asylum or modern slavery.

The law, which is the key to engagement of Rishi Sunak to "stop the boats", stipulates that they will be detained for at least 28 days, or more if the Minister of the Interior deems it "reasonably necessary".< /p>

The counterpart of Crossbench, Lord Carlile successfully lobbied for change, removing the Home Secretary's detention powers and returning them to the courts.

He said the government had "left the world of reality and the law and takes a trip to the land of the cloudy cuckoo clocks”. "We keep hearing something from ministers that is not based on reality, they seem to have forgotten that they lost the case in the Court of Appeal last week," added Lord Carlile .

"The fact is that we in this house especially have the right to expect the government to obey the law. They cannot send anyone to Rwanda, it is illegal".. .