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MPs gather in the House of Commons ahead of the second vote on the emergency Rwanda migrant deportation bill in London, United Kingdom, December 12, 2023. (AP photo)

British lawmakers have voted in favor of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s contentious plan to send migrants to Rwanda.

In a tense vote on Tuesday afternoon, members of Parliament on Tuesday voted 313 to 269 in favor of the so-called Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.

"The British people should decide who gets to come to this country - not criminal gangs or foreign courts," Sunak said on social media after the controversial bill passed.

Sunak called the bill "the toughest ever anti-immigration law", proposing that "the British people should decide who gets to come to this country -- not criminal gangs or foreign courts."

"We will now work to make it law so that we can get flights going to Rwanda and stop the boats," he wrote on X.

Sunak’s Conservatives hold the large majority but the prime minister could only win a knife-edge parliamentary vote because dozens of MPs within his party opposed the bill.

Sunak’s climate minister Graham Stuart was even recalled to London from the COP28 summit in Dubai to cast his vote.

The importance Sunak has attached to the policy could mean that its failure would bring about his downfall.

Human Rights Watch UK director Yasmine Ahmed slammed the bill as "a defeat for human decency and a hammer blow for the rule of law."

MP Mark Francois said the so-called "five families" of hardline Tory factions opposed the bill as it stood.

"The prime minister has been telling colleagues today he is prepared to entertain tightening the bill," the arch-Brexiteer said before the vote.

"With that aim, at the committee stage we will aim to table amendments which, we hope, if accepted, materially improves and removes some of its weaknesses," he said.

"Let’s pick this up again in January."

Political scientist Tim Bale, from Queen Mary University of London, told AFP that Sunak’s "arm-twisting and promise-making in the end did the trick."

"But it’s a temporary reprieve rather than a triumph for Rishi Sunak," he added.

"There are plenty of hurdles he still has to jump and, given the level of abstentions from Tory MPs who want to see the bill made even more draconian than it is already, there’s absolutely no guarantee they’ll be surmountable," he stated.

"And even if they are, this legislation still has to get through the (upper chamber House of) Lords."