The Illegal Migration Bill is making its final crossing today to become an Act, after peers and MPs voted into the small hours on the final changes to the legislation. The House of Lords eventually dropped the amendments that they’d been holding out on, including the plan by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, for the government to draw up a proper international strategy for refugees and an amendment from Lord Randall of Uxbridge on victims of modern slavery.

It became clear that these peers were not going to have any luck when Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick opened the ‘ping-pong’ debate in the Commons by telling MPs there would be no more compromises from the government. This was then followed by his Lords colleague Lord Murray calling on peers to ‘respect the will of the elected House and the British people by passing this bill’.

It hasn’t been an easy passage for this Bill, but it could have been much more difficult

There were, though, still Conservative rebellions in the Commons on a number of amendments that the government was throwing out. At least five Tory MPs went through the No lobbies on most of the votes, with the rebels growing in number to more than a dozen. Theresa May did not vote last night, but former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith did – and he was one of the rebels.

Duncan Smith was among a number of Tories who made it very clear in the Commons half of the debate that the Bill gaining Royal Assent would not be the end of the battle. He and others, including Vicky Ford, were highly critical of the guidance and secondary legislation for victims of modern slavery and unaccompanied children.

Ford ended up reading the guidance on the latter to Jenrick and complained that it was largely about maintaining buildings rather than providing an age appropriate environment for the children themselves. This had a particular sting to it given the recent controversy over Jenrick ordering pictures of Disney characters to be painted over at one centre.

But one thing that didn’t happen in the end was a Tory rebellion on the Bill not being tough enough. There had been dark talk from many of those who supported Boris Johnson and Liz Truss that Rishi Sunak would need to go further on the European Court of Human Rights or ram the unamended Bill through using the Parliament Act to prevent peers getting their way.

None of that came to pass, partly because the MPs in question felt the Bill was in better shape than they’d imagined, and partly because they simply didn’t have as much firepower as they’d like.

It hasn’t been an easy passage for this Bill, but it could have been much more difficult. Now the really tricky bit comes: implementing a piece of legislation that, in stopping the boats, promises to do something few really believe it can achieve.