Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Horam

Report stage
Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 23 and 27, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. They deal with Clause 4(1)(a) and (b), and relate very simply to “compelling evidence”. The threshold is quite simply too high for someone to be found to require “particular individual circumstances” to be considered. The point of these amendments is to take away “compelling”.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I am concerned about Amendment 9 from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, which on the face of it seems extremely reasonable. If new, clear evidence and facts emerge, they should obviously be presented and tackled appropriately, but I wonder whether we are mixing up what the law can do with operational issues. After all, as was explained at some length from the Front Bench in the last debate, we have a monitoring committee with all sorts of bells and whistles, which should be able to pick up anything that is going wrong on the ground floor; it is the ground floor that matters. It is that issue—operational versus the law—that concerns me.

I quote to the House the remarks of Sir Robert Neill, who is a lawyer and chairman of the House of Commons Justice Committee, at Second Reading in the other place:

“Equally, the idea that legislation is the sole or even the principal solution to this situation is, I think, wrong. Ultimately, an operational solution is required … Ultimately, it will be operational measures that make the real difference”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/12/23; col. 783.]


This is the point: there is a danger of mixing up operational issues, which may be dealt with by the Rwandan Government, the British Government, and the instruments put in place by the treaty, and getting the courts involved at too early or inappropriate a stage. That is the risk with the commendable idea that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Horam

Report stage
Wednesday 5th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

This is an important initiative from the most reverend Primate on this subject, for two reasons. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, just said, it is truly an international subject; there are huge issues here that we cannot escape and generations to come will not be able to escape. Secondly, we have to tackle this on a long-term basis, but that does not mean that it has to be set in concrete for 10 years. I am sure the most reverend Primate meant exactly that.

For example, Australia has a framework with which both its Liberal Party and its Labor Party agree. Each year they look at the numbers and agree how many should come in for work reasons, as asylum seekers, for economic reasons or for family reasons. The number is debated in Parliament and it may change. We ought to debate immigration and how much we should have every year, as we debate the Budget. We will disagree. Governments will change and the numbers will change, but within a framework that we all understand and to which we can relate. It would give ordinary people in this country a better feeling about this subject, rather than the resentment and difficulty that we have faced over many years, as we did over Brexit, for example.

The most reverend Primate may be pushing at an open door. He may be aware that, last week in Brussels, the Governments of eight countries—Denmark, Greece and Austria among them—wrote to the European Commission asking the European Union to pursue a new approach, based on the British model. That is one point.

Secondly, alongside those eight countries, another group—including Italy and the Netherlands—has said that it wants to pursue a new model, based on the British approach. No other practical approach has been forthcoming. We think that we have problems, but Italy is talking about the possibility of 400,000 people crossing the Mediterranean, when we are talking about 45,000 last year. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, was saying, this is a truly international problem and will have only an international conclusion. As that is what is happening in Europe, the most reverend Primate may be pushing at an open door.

It is not surprising that this is happening because, whichever way you look at this issue, you come back to something along the lines that the Government are proposing. I know that some quite serious amendments have been proposed in this House, some of which will go through and some of which will not. None the less, the basic bones of this—safe and legal routes on the one hand, and some means to deter illegal migrants on the other—will be there whatever we try. Over a year ago, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change said that, whichever way you look at this, those two elements will probably be there in any solution.

I want to raise a separate point with my noble friend the Minister, which I have raised before but not yet had answered. There is a lot of legality surrounding the Government’s proposals, the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. We should not get too bogged down in the legalisms, because we need a common-sense approach that deals with the problem as it is today. As I understand it, discussions are going on not only in Europe about adopting the British model for the overall problem but between the UK Government and other Governments about how this would sit against our existing treaties in Europe, in particular the ECHR, and whether elements are incompatible or are largely in agreement. I would like to know whether these discussions are taking place. I am not a lawyer, but it seems sensible, if the legal arrangements allow it, for these sorts of discussions to take place. That seems common sense to me, rather than having ping-pong arrangements in which some people disagree and it goes to the courts. We ought to be able to discuss these issues rationally before they go to the courts.

The most reverend Primate is raising this issue in the right sort of way, but I believe that all this, taken together, means that the Government are right to persevere on their fundamental track while taking account, sympathetically, of the points that have been made.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest on the register in relation to human trafficking. If I may respectfully say so, the most reverend Primate has put forward not only a very shrewd but a very wise proposal. It ought to be cross-party; it certainly should not be brushed aside as though it were just part of the Bill, because it is much deeper and goes much further.

I am very glad that proposed subsection (2) includes provisions for tackling human trafficking, because there is a chance that we might retrieve a little of the Modern Slavery Act—something of which this country ought to have been intensely proud, until last year and this year—if we manage to do something sensible, as the most reverend Primate has suggested.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Horam

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I would happily support all the amendments, although I would prefer Amendment 4, which I think expresses it more accurately, perhaps, than the others. I only really want to make one point because so many points have been made with which I entirely agree and they are almost unanimous across the Committee, as perhaps the Committee is noticing. We heard from other speakers that the Prime Minister put his name to that convention or treaty earlier in Reykjavik in which he is supporting international conventions. The Minister in the other place spoke about caring about international conventions. The question I want to ask the Minister is: looking at this Bill, looking at how it has been pulled apart in Clause 1, does the Minister really feel able to say that the Government care at all about international obligations?

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I want to comment on the speech made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford just now. She made a very important point which the Committee should take note of. She said that the amount of work that went into the programme to deal with people fleeing Ukraine was significant and she praised that. She understood from her experience the amount of effort that the Home Office made in that particular case.