Baroness Chakrabarti condemned Rishi Sunak’s “sabre-rattling about ‘the unelected House of Lords will have to do the right thing’”.

“If Parliament is to address the Supreme Court’s concerns, my noble and learned friend and his committee must be listened to,” she said.

“Because everything he has said, with all due respect to our Commonwealth friend and partner in Rwanda, is triggered not on what we say, what we deem with a flick of a pen, but the legitimate and totally noble aspiration… Perhaps we’ll all become safer, but it is that greater safety in the future that the Supreme Court – not a foreign court, let alone an international court – that our very own Supreme Court called for.”

She added: “Before all the lectures about unelected second houses et cetera, I do think on matters of the rule of law, your lordships have a part to play. And especially in a country with an unwritten constitution, a Human Rights Act, a modern Bill of Rights which is not entrenched – and even when the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, does not have the strike down powers that other democracies reserve for their highest courts.

“I do believe that noble Lords are entitled to be a little more muscular than usual in relation to matters such as this that were, my Lords, not in anyone’s manifesto, that risk being contrary to the domestic rule of law, including by ousting the jurisdiction of the law or indeed changing reality as it has been found by the Supreme Court on Nov 15. A little muscular in relation to matters that risk breaching international law.”