Plan ‘betrayal’ of values, says French president in speech covering defence, Europe’s waning influence and negative effects of Brexit

• Europe live – latest updates

Emmanuel Macron has criticised migration policies that involve sending migrants to African countries as “a betrayal of our [European] values”, just days after the UK government passed its Rwanda deportation bill.

The French president made the remarks in a wide-ranging speech on Thursday aimed at warning Europe against over-dependence on other countries for security and trade.

Home secretary visits Lampedusa in Italy as National Audit Office says scheme could surpass £580m by 2030

Several flights a month will deport asylum seekers to Rwanda “indefinitely”, the home secretary has said, as he argued that the £1.8m a person cost of the scheme was justified.

James Cleverly, in his first interview since the government’s plan was approved by parliament on Monday, said he had booked a succession of initial flights and was preparing to order the detention of people seeking refuge in the UK so they could be sent to east Africa.

Legislation to go back to Commons due to peers standing up for rights of Afghans and scrutiny of refugees’ treatment

The parliamentary battle over Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill will spill into next week after the Lords refused to budge over the rights of Afghans and scrutiny of the treatment of refugees in east Africa.

The move prompted an immediate backlash from the home secretary, James Cleverly, who blamed Labour for blocking the bill and being “terrified” that the Rwanda plan will stop asylum seekers from travelling to the UK in small boats.

Paul Kagame flew to UK for Champions League match while national police told citizens to restrict activities including football

The president of Rwanda, whose police force has asked the country’s populace to restrict football-related activities during the 30-year anniversary of the Rwanda massacre, is facing questions after flying to the UK and watching Arsenal play Bayern Munich.

Paul Kagame visited on Tuesday 9 April to watch the Champions League match in north London. Before the match, he visited Rishi Sunak at No 10 Downing Street, after giving civil servants just a few days’ notice of his visit. They discussed the UK’s deportation deal, which aims to send asylum seekers to Kigali to be processed there.

Lords also press ministers to allow independent Rwanda monitoring as deportation bill returns to Commons

• UK politics – latest updates

Rishi Sunak’s government is considering concessions on the Rwanda deportation bill to allow exemptions for Afghans who served alongside UK forces, parliamentary sources say.

Ministers are also being pressed to give ground to an amendment to the legislation so that the east African country could be ruled unsafe by a monitoring committee.

Peers pass four amendments inserting safeguards into bill, including exempting migrants who helped British troops

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:

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.

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.

PM’s plan to prevent those under 16 ever being able to buy tobacco should pass due to Labour support, but many of his own MPs could abstain or vote against

In another interview this morning, Laura Farris , minister for victims, told GB News that she thought Liz Truss, the former PM, was wrong to call for the supreme court to be abolished . Asked about the proposal (one of many provocative things Truss has been saying in interviews to promote her new book), Farris said:

I’ve got to say, I don’t agree actually. I think that we have a healthy democracy, a pluralistic democracy.

And I think that institutions like the supreme court are vital, actually. And it’s always been the case that … our judiciary is admired the world over.

I think this is a very, very sensible policy and I’m not particularly interested in arguments about freedom on this one.

It took me years and years and years to quit. It’s one of my biggest regrets, actually.

Between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans were​ massacred in 100 days between April and​ June 1994.​ The ethnic genocide by Hutu militias ended with the seizure of power by the​ Tutsi troops of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame, who has now been president for 24 years.

In Kigali last year, French photographer Julien Daniel collected testimonies of some of the city’s young people born since the genocide and who have grown up knowing only one leader

• Photographs by Julien Daniel/MYOP

Rishi Sunak braced for fresh round of wrangling over plan that is due to cost taxpayers £1.8m per deportee

• UK politics – latest updates

The number of people travelling by small boat to seek asylum in the UK hit a new daily high for 2024 at the weekend, figures show, as Rishi Sunak braces for a fresh round of parliamentary wrangling over the Rwanda deportation bill.

Unions and charities are preparing to mount legal challenges if the bill, which is meant to stop the boats, passes into law this week.