'I want Rishi to prove Suella wrong,' says Sir John Redwood

“What I want to hear is the Prime Minister's response because what the former Home Secretary is saying is that there are problems with the small boats policy which she pointed out and which he didn't adjust to.

“I want him to prove her wrong by showing us that he has taken on board all sensible criticisms of his policy.

“Having heard from him personally, I know that he very strongly wants to stop the small boats.

“There were clearly disagreements with his Home Secretary over how far you had to go to do that and tomorrow we will find out whether they’ve won in court or not and whether there needs to be more legislation.

“One of the big arguments we see in the Suella Braverman letter is her thought that we needed even stronger legislation to do the job. Well, we’ll know part of the answer to that tomorrow.

“I was very strongly of the view that as I and others helped get the Northern Ireland protocol bill through the Commons, with no Conservative MP voting against our proposal, I would like to see it complete its stages in the Lords.

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“It's much better to have a UK based solution so that Northern Ireland is completely part of our single market and country and we make all the decisions on their taxes and laws.

“So I was very surprised when the Prime Minister and the Business Secretary dropped that particular measure and similarly with the retained EU law bill.

“They might argue that some of that wasn’t properly formed, in which case why didn’t they amend it because there are a lot of EU regulations that we still apply.

“I imagine she’ll let us know her views further, that is quite normal for somebody of that importance and stature retiring.

“We now know what she's going to say so the Prime Minister will have plenty of chances to research his answer.

“But I would urge the prime minister to take the policy issues very seriously to demonstrate he can stop the small boats and I think he should revisit the settlement with the EU because there are a lot of laws and taxes that still apply to us that shouldn't and we need those modifications.”