Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Natalie Elphicke Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

I know how seriously the hon. Gentleman takes this important issue. There is a policy of non-discrimination in the Rwandan constitution, which will provide some reassurance. The monitoring committee is also there on a daily basis. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. We have made it clear that we cannot continue to allow relocations to Rwanda to be frustrated and delayed as a result of systemic challenges on general safety.

On amendment 7, we need a strong deterrent to stop people putting their lives at risk by crossing the channel. While creating that deterrent, it is important that the Government take decisive action also to deter adults from claiming to be children.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend is right that it is essential that protections are in place to ensure that adults do not masquerade as children, to safeguard all those concerned. However, he will be aware, as was raised in the Lords, that the age assessment criteria were to be introduced in 2022—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) agree. The criteria still have not come into effect at the border in Dover and Manston. Will the Minister assist the House by explaining how there can be confidence about age assessment and how it can be gamed if the amendment is agreed?

[Michael Tomlinson]

I noted some vigorous nodding from my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). My hon. Friend is right that we need to introduce scientific age assessments. Our European and international friends and allies do so, and we must get that scheme up and running. There is nothing in amendment 7 that directly affects that or the 2022 policy, so I encourage her to be reassured on that point. I will take away her encouragement to expedite that and I am grateful for her intervention, because she is right.

My hon. Friend anticipated my point that assessing age is inherently difficult and there are obvious safeguarding risks if adults purporting to be children are placed in the care system. It is important that we take clear steps to deter adults from claiming to be children and to avoid lengthy legal challenges to age-assessment decisions to prevent the removal of those who have been assessed to be adults. However, the amendment would result in treating differently those who are to be removed to Rwanda from those removed to another country. We consider the provisions in place entirely necessary to safeguard genuine children and to guard against adults who seek to game the system by purporting to be children.

On Lords amendment 8, the House will be aware that the Home Office regularly publishes statistics on migration levels in the United Kingdom. It is not necessary to report the number of removals to Parliament in the manner proposed. We do not consider an obligation to report to Parliament on operational matters to be appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

My hon. and learned Friend anticipates my conclusion, and I agree with him entirely. In fact, he agrees with me entirely, in advance.

[Mrs Elphicke]

In light of what my right hon. and learned Friend says, how does he see Parliament’s role in assessing any future breaches of the treaty?

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

Essentially, Lords amendments 2 and 3—flawed as they are—raise the valid issue of what happens if Rwanda at any point falls below the standards expected of it to justify its safe country status. The Bill would establish in legislation the largely unchallengeable conclusion that Rwanda is a safe country for the purposes of the Bill because Parliament says so, without any mechanism for Parliament to say differently if the facts change—save, presumably, for fresh primary legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

That is another question, I suppose. The point is that everyone is different. We cannot reliably look at someone and tell their age. The Bill should contain more protections to ensure that children who have already gone through incredibly traumatic experiences are not sent to Rwanda.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

As I have said, I am conscious of what we have been told about time. I am sure that if the hon. Lady wants to make a speech on this subject later, we will all listen to it.

Lords amendment 8 adds a mechanism for a report to Parliament. Under the heading

“Removals to Rwanda under the Illegal Migration Act 2023”,

it states:

“Within 60 days of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a statement”.

Again, that is an important scrutiny mechanism. We in this Parliament should know who is being sent to Rwanda and the timetable for those removals, as this Lords amendment suggests.

Most importantly, proposed new paragraph (c) in amendment 8 deals with the arrangements in place for people not sent to Rwanda. We know that only the tiniest percentage of people who end up here will be sent to Rwanda; it is entirely unrealistic to suggest that more than a few hundred people will ever get sent there, so we need to know what happens to the people who end up in immigration limbo—those who are inadmissible. Where are they? Who looks after them? Where do they live? How do they survive? What do they eat? We need to know what happens to the people this Government are committing to immigration limbo; it is important, and the Government should update Parliament on it. The Minister talked about publishing immigration statistics, but I think we need more than that; this House needs to hold the Government accountable for the people they send to Rwanda, and the people they do not send there.

The point about the timetable of removals is also important, because I am aware of people in Dungavel who are keen to leave the UK, yet the UK Government are taking an age to arrange the mechanisms for them to do so. Even when people want and have reason to go somewhere else, the Government are not facilitating that. Worryingly, the Minister said it was not necessary to report on that to Parliament. I disagree; it is entirely important and necessary to report on that to Parliament, so that we can hold the Government accountable. Again, if they think that this will go so well, surely they will want to tell us how many people they have sent away, rather than about those they have not.

Lords amendment 9 is about victims of modern slavery and human trafficking being removed without their consent. That is a deep concern for many organisations who support people who have been trafficked and have been through absolute hell. It is important that those people are not removed to Rwanda without their consent. Redress has provided a briefing about torture in Rwanda, and it highlights that there have been cases of it. Human Rights Watch’s reports on Rwanda, published in 2023, 2022 and 2021, all include examples of torture. There is list in the Redress briefing that I urge all Members to have a look at, although I will not detain the House with it now.

The briefing highlights that in the Supreme Court case, it was pointed out that

“evidence of human rights violations ‘raises serious questions as to its compliance with [Rwanda’s] international obligations’, since this has occurred despite the country having ratified many international human rights agreements”.

Furthermore, the British Medical Association’s briefing raised concerns about the ability of Rwanda to support those who have been victims of torture. Rwanda is on the list of countries experiencing a healthcare worker crisis; it is on the list of countries that the UK is not supposed to recruit from. Again, that calls into question whether people can be supported when they go to Rwanda. The BMA briefing states:

“Medical reviews of 36 people under threat of removal to Rwanda revealed that 26 displayed medical indicators of having been tortured, with 15 having symptoms or a diagnosis of PTSD and 11 having experienced suicidal thoughts while in detention.”

We are talking about an incredibly vulnerable group, and they deserve specific support. It is important that we recognise that Lords amendment 9 should stay in the Bill

I come to Lords amendment 10, in which Lord Browne of Ladyton proposes a change to protect supporters of the UK armed forces and their families from removal to Rwanda. That is a significant amendment, particularly in the context of Afghanistan. I have talked many times in this House about Afghans, such as the Triples, who supported the UK’s endeavours in Afghanistan and have been despicably left behind. I continue to get regular emails from a woman who was trained by UK forces and worked alongside them in Afghanistan. She is increasingly frustrated and terrified, but most of all she is despondent that the UK has let her down and has not kept the promises that she felt she had been made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am going to carry on. The hon. Gentleman spoke at length, and I want to get through a number of amendments.

I turn to amendments 2 and 3, which also relate to the treaty. In the other place, Lord Hope argued that Rwanda being declared a safe country should be dependent on the arrangements provided for in the treaty being “fully implemented” and “adhered to in practice”, with amendment 3 setting out what that would actually look like and giving the independent monitoring committee a significant role in reporting on this. In response, the Minister in the Lords set out that the Government would ratify the treaty only

“once we agree with Rwanda that all necessary implementation is in place”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1358.]

As we know, the Bill will come into force only once the treaty has been ratified. Again, it would have been helpful and beneficial for this House to have had the opportunity to debate the treaty, yet scrutiny of its provisions did not happen in the Commons, just as financial details of the UK-Rwanda partnership had been held back from Parliament until very recently. As highlighted in last week’s estimates day debate on asylum and migration, the Home Office repeatedly refused the Home Affairs Committee’s requests for basic financial information about the scheme, and disclosed some of the costs only after our Committee joined forces with the Public Accounts Committee to request a National Audit Office investigation.

We now know that the core costs are very expensive: £370 million for the economic transformation and integration fund, an additional £20,000 per individual relocated, a further £120 million once 300 people have been relocated and, on top of all that, £150,874 for each individual relocated to Rwanda. There is a direct cost to the Home Office of £28 million by the end of 2023-24, with £1 million per year in staff costs and £11,000 for the flight cost of each individual relocated, and I still do not know whether the Home Office has been able to enter into a contract with an airline to deliver the removals to Rwanda. Crucially, though, we still have not been told the costs for implementing the provisions in the treaty, such as a new asylum appeals body. Is there money available, and has it been allocated to pay for that?

We already know that the Home Office budget is under acute pressure. On 1 February this year, the Home Secretary requested an emergency drawdown of £2.6 billion from the reserves, because the Department had run out of money before the supplementary estimates had been approved. With serious questions still to answer about how the Government will fund the implementation of the treaty, and about its practical implementation, I believe that the amendments help to provide some necessary assurances that the Government have hitherto failed to provide to Parliament.

Amendments 4 and 5 would make it possible to argue that Rwanda is not a safe country on the presentation of “credible evidence to the contrary” and would allow appeals to be brought on that basis. Responding on behalf of the Government, the Minister in the Lords said:

“We have been clear that the purpose of this legislation is to stop the boats, and to do that we must create a deterrent that shows that, if you enter the UK illegally, you will not be able to stay.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1378.]

The Home Affairs Committee has repeatedly asked both Ministers and senior officials what evidence there is for the deterrent effect of the Rwanda scheme. The permanent secretary, Sir Matthew Rycroft, required a ministerial direction for the scheme, because there was no evidence that it would provide value for money. When he gave evidence before the Committee last year, he said that this was because

“the value-for-money judgment depends on the amount of deterrence that the policy will produce.”

He noted that although the number of people crossing the channel is falling, it

“is very hard to tell how much of that is the possibility of being relocated to Rwanda, particularly, as you suggest, before the first flights to Rwanda have taken off.”

The truth is that we actually do not have any idea whether the policy that this Bill facilitates will have the deterrent effect that the Minister cites. As I highlighted in Committee of the whole House, it does not seem sensible for the Government to propose that the status of Rwanda as a safe country should be fixed for ever more, which would, by extension, make Rwanda the only country on Earth in which nothing ever happens or changes. Amendments enabling the presentation of evidence relating to those changes and their implications for safety in Rwanda therefore seem eminently reasonable and, indeed, necessary.

Amendment 6 deletes clause 4 and introduces into the Bill a new clause that allows much wider grounds for legal challenge. The Home Affairs Select Committee has always recognised that appropriate legal challenge is a necessary part of any functioning asylum system. Amendment 7 disapplies section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, meaning that people claiming to be children could appeal against a decision that they are over 18. The noble Baroness Lister, who tabled that amendment, explained that it was intended to

“minimise the risk of any unaccompanied child being sent to Rwanda”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1577.]

During the Home Affairs Committee’s channel crossings inquiry, we heard multiple examples of safeguarding processes failing across various parts of the asylum system, including cases of children being mistaken for adults. Section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act refers to the process of age assessment in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The Committee’s channel crossings report noted that that Act contains a number of provisions relating to age assessment, including a new national age assessment board and powers for the Home Secretary to make regulations specifying scientific methods for age assessments. Our report notes:

“The provisions are controversial because there is broad consensus that age assessment should not rely exclusively, or for some stakeholders, at all, on analyses of the skeleton or the teeth.”

I am concerned that without the amendment tabled by Baroness Lister, the Bill could produce a situation where a child is wrongly assessed as being an adult and sent to Rwanda.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am going to carry on, because I want other Members to be able to speak.

Amendment 8 relates to the timetable for removals under the Illegal Migration Act. It would require the Home Secretary to lay before Parliament a statement setting out all the individuals whose asylum claims have been deemed inadmissible since that Act received Royal Assent. The statement would have to include the number of individuals due to be removed to Rwanda and the timetable for those removals, as well as the arrangements for those individuals not being removed to Rwanda.

Again, that is information that the Home Affairs Committee has already tried to glean from the Home Office. Indeed, when the Home Secretary appeared before the Committee in January, I asked him how many individuals whose asylum claims had been deemed inadmissible since the Illegal Migration Act received Royal Assent would be sent to Rwanda. He replied:

“That will depend on which other countries we have returns agreements with.”

Despite pressing him several times on that point, our attempts to ascertain any further information were unsuccessful. As the noble Lord Coaker said when moving his amendment, this is a subject on which it would be good to have some facts. That is why his amendment has significant merit.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The hon. Lady is trying to get in, so I will give way, but I am keen to finish.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I am grateful to her for giving way, because I was hoping to intervene on the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), on a similar point.

When it comes to facts, I am concerned that those being presented are slightly selective, particularly in relation to age assessment. In the House of Lords, the evidence that was brought before their lordships was that—as the right hon. Lady knows—the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee, the expert committee that is independent and has been set up independently, has proposed that the accuracy of age assessment will be improved in multiple ways: not just using one biological method, but a range of methods alongside the existing one. I am concerned that partial evidence about age assessment is being presented in today’s debate, and I would be very grateful for the right hon. Lady’s confirmation that she supports the inclusion of those important methods of age assessment that the committee has recommended, in order to support accurate age assessment for safeguarding children.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Very briefly, I am reporting what the cross-party Home Affairs Committee decided and put in our report on cross-channel small boat crossings. We produced that report nearly two years ago—this matter has been going on for some time. I am reporting our concerns, which are widely shared among all members of the Committee, about the problems that exist. It is very difficult to assess the correct age of a person who claims to be a child, so it is worth reflecting that this is not easy, and the Home Affairs Committee is mindful and concerned about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alexander Stafford]

That is an interesting point. I am under no illusion that Rwanda is a great country, but I will tell the hon. Gentleman a country that is even better than Rwanda: the United Kingdom. So of course they want to come to Britain, because we are a better country. That does not mean that Rwanda is not safe, or that it should not be safe.

On Lords amendments 4 and 5, the Government have already completed a detailed assessment that Rwanda is a safe country. We need to accept the facts of that assessment and start to take even more action while the boat crossings are low. And they are low: they were down 36% last year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) mentioned, that is because of the other stuff we are doing such as the Albanian deal, which is working, and stopping the boats physically getting to the sources.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another safe country is France?

[Alexander Stafford]

I thank my hon. Friend, who does so much work on this issue in her constituency. Indeed, France is a very safe country—as are Spain, Italy, Germany and so many countries crossed by illegal immigrants. They should claim asylum in the first safe country. They have no duty or right to come over this way, but we do have a right and duty to protect our country, protect our borders, protect our sovereignty and protect our people. That is why we need to have a clear idea of who is coming here and ensure that we can deport the people we do not want or do not need, and process them elsewhere.

Turning back to Lords amendments 4 and 5, we cannot allow individuals to challenge their removal grounds on the basis that Rwanda is not a safe country. The UK Government have made the assessment and we cannot let the amendment allow for individuals to challenge their removal grounds. New international treaties mean that our decision cannot be second-guessed, and that is vital in moving forward with this legislation.

I disagree with Lords amendments 6 and 9, as Rwanda has its own safeguarding system to ensure the safety of individuals who will be relocated to Rwanda. If we start questioning each claim and whether to send them to Rwanda, we are adhering to the idea that Rwanda is not a safe country, which contradicts the safeguarding processes that Rwanda has already introduced. We have already identified that Rwanda is a safe country, so it should not be up for interpretation based on an individual’s claim that they cannot be sent there.

I also disagree with Lords amendment 7, as it can incorrectly favour individuals who want to abuse our immigration system. We need robust measures to be implemented to ensure that the Rwanda plan is executed with efficiency to prevent those who want to play the system. We need to ensure that this is the toughest legislation ever. We need to do everything we can to prevent individuals from impersonating children to bypass the Rwanda scheme. We have already discussed checks on whether people are children. To protect children, we need to make sure who is a child and who is not. There are safe and independent ways of verifying a person’s age. That goes on in other countries. I believe German and maybe France use similar processes, and I do not think any of us is claiming that France or Germany are not safe countries. If it is good for them, it is good for us. We heard how the legislation in Germany and France is different from ours, but if they can have such checks, then so should we. They will safeguard the British people but also genuine child refugees, to make sure they are not put in an awful situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Elphicke]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the SNP objected to the regulations on age verification, while the Labour party did not even vote on the regulations, which had to be carried by Conservative votes?

[Alexander Stafford]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. That is shocking, and it just shows where the care and safeguarding of children lies in their priorities. As a local Member of Parliament, I know what Labour thinks about safeguarding our girls in Rotherham. We should be able to look after everyone. This Bill will ensure that we look after the people in Britain, that we give sovereignty to our people and that we control our borders. We have had two years of dither and delay, of wrecking amendments, of planes not taking off, of people being pulled off planes, and of Opposition Members trying everything possible to stop this well-needed, well-liked and well-supported policy going forward. Anybody trying to support the amendments is no better than those who want to wreck the Bill and have an open-door policy. I say to all Members of this House that we must reject the Lords amendments, we must stand up for Britain, we must stand up for our sovereignty and we must get wheels down in Kigali as soon as possible.