Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Baroness Lawlor and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her interjection. I am referring to the treaties emerging from the post-Second World War world, which was very much a European world at that time, to deal with circumstances such as the Holocaust and others, which had been left over from and arisen from it. I agree that there has been constant movement in this area. For instance, the European court at Strasbourg continues to make judicial interventions that sometimes try to push the European Convention on Human Rights much further than it was initially drafted to cover.

However, if I might continue, these treaties were conceived for a European world, by and large, and circumstances very different from our own. As I have said, these arrangements provide for potentially unlimited numbers of people from outside this country to command priority over the express and explicit wishes of its citizens.

Today, mass immigration threatens the democratic arrangements of western countries, the political systems on which they rest, and the stability on which societies and their economies depend. The threat does not stand over Britain alone. The failure of Governments all over Europe to stop clandestine or illegal immigration is destabilising them and their political arrangements. The difficulty of controlling long land borders all over Europe and the difficulties thrown up by the Schengen rules—now, I fear, ignored in many cases—have brought instability and undermined the democratic order. So too have international obligations embedded in domestic law and constitutions. The Sweden Democrats, who advocate tight controls on immigration, have shot to being the largest party in the centre-right governing bloc. For Denmark’s left and its social democratic Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s greatest challenge is non-western immigration. Italy can no longer process the volumes of asylum seekers arriving in small boats in Lampedusa and has called on the EU to help. France passed a measure on immigration, only to have the very amendments that had allowed it to pass, after 18 months to two years of wrangling, struck down by the constitutional court.

The UK is in a more fortunate position than these countries, since it is subject neither to Schengen nor the constraints of EU membership. This country and its people have the power to make their own laws. Their legitimacy derives not from arrangements made for times and circumstances different from our own—for a Eurocentric world, to be interpreted by internationalist institutions at a remove from democratic accountability that are often unaccountable for the consequences of the rules they liberally apply. I refer to my noble friend Lord Howard, who is not in his place: the question of democratic accountability must be central to any debate on controlling the UK’s borders.

Our Government have indeed recognised this in drawing up the present Bill, but they have held back from the final measure needed to make it effective. My amendment, like the same one proposed in the other place, will ensure that the Bill is fit for purpose—a purpose fervently desired by the people of this country.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Lawlor. I will speak generally about the Bill very briefly, and the amendment, and also say why I strongly oppose the amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Hailsham and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, which are pernicious and dangerous. I cannot believe that, when my noble friend Lord Hailsham sought election in the county constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham in 2010, he would have told his constituents that he would seek to disregard the rights and privileges of Parliament in favour of supranational legal entities and international treaties, because I suspect that that would not have been a very popular point of view to take. But that seems to be the logical implication of the amendment he has put forward today.

The Bill does contain some important statements of principle, in that it reasserts the sovereignty of Parliament and its right to legislate to cut through the morass of alleged international norms which currently frustrate the ability of the United Kingdom to control its own borders, in Clause 1(4). The partial disapplication of aspects of the Human Rights Act—

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Lawlor and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Report stage
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Noakes on this issue, and I am delighted to have had the opportunity to support her by adding my name to the amendment. Noble Lords will remember that during the passage of the EU withdrawal Bill there was a great deal of discussion about whether this House sought to gain for itself executive powers—that is, to become the Government in directing government policy with respect to the withdrawal Act and exiting from the European Union, rather than performing its proper constitutional role, which we all concede is effective scrutiny and oversight.

This amendment is a helpful compromise in seeking to direct Ministers, the Government and the Civil Service to a place where we can all agree. I am sure that noble Lords who earlier this week supported Amendments 2 and 4 and spoke to Amendment 76, which I gather later today we are likely to divide on, will welcome this amendment—you need congestion charging on the road to Damascus, because the traffic is quite heavy at the moment. Those who were happy to turn a blind eye to the huge corpus of EU legislation from 1973 to 2020 are now praying in aid the importance of scrutiny and oversight. That being so, this is a good vehicle to give effect to that, particularly the need for periodic reviews of the Government’s progress on the dashboard.

As I made clear when I spoke earlier in the week, people are watching how this House and the Government ensure that the decision they made in 2016 is given proper effect. While I understand that this House cannot instruct the Government, this is a good way of achieving compromise. I expect a majority on all sides of the House to give my noble friend’s amendment their strong and emphatic support, and I fully expect, since the Minister has an opportunity so to do, an amendment to be laid at Third Reading that consolidates this amendment. If that is possible, I think there will be a strong consensus as the Bill goes forward. In the meantime, I strongly support the amendment and I hope noble Lords will give it their support.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I have added my name to my noble friend Lady Noakes’s Amendment 51A, and I would like to follow on from what she has said. It is important that the legislative momentum for sunsetting, removing or revoking EU legislation be kept up. The reporting requirement on the Government will, as she said, keep up the momentum and help the Government and indeed Parliament to keep track of what has gone, what is yet to go and how further regulations, if any, will be modified.

There is a very good reason for doing this, and it relates to cost. Ultimately, it is people who bear the costs, either through what they pay for goods and services or through their taxes for government compliance costs in dealing, as now, with two systems of law: EU retained law and our own common law.

I hope the reporting requirement will enable us all to know where we are going and help us keep track of getting rid of that which the Government have pledged to get rid of or modify where necessary. That is very important in the interests of efficiency, for everyone, not just businesses. It is also important for transparency. Not only does regular reporting help the momentum; it will make for fairness so that we are all clear about the rules. I hope it will mean greater prosperity, which we need to encourage. In my view, we need to move back more thoroughly to our common-law system, and that is something on which I hope to touch when we consider the next group of amendments.