Rwanda Treaty

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Bolton and Lord Sharpe of Epsom

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The treaty enhances the role of the independent monitoring committee. It will ensure that obligations under the treaty are adhered to in practice and will be able to take steps to prevent errors at an early stage. It will have the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring and will have unfettered access for the purposes of completing assessments and reports that will monitor the entire relocation process from the beginning, including screening, to relocation and settlement in Rwanda. It will be responsible for developing a system to enable relocated individuals and legal representatives to lodge confidential complaints direct to the committee and it will undertake real-time monitoring of the partnership for at least the first three months. There is plenty of scope in there for it to get involved in everything.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

Will the Minister acknowledge and confirm that Home Office officials insisted on a letter of direction on this matter because they did not consider that this would be value for money? Can the Minister also tell the House why the Government are not devoting resources of this size to tackling the criminal gangs that are so cruel in bringing people in in such a dangerous way?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

On the noble Baroness’s second point, the Government are devoting considerable resources to tackling the criminal gangs, as has been well established from the Dispatch Box in many previous debates. As regards the letter that was sent yesterday, I am sure the noble Baroness will recall that the Permanent Secretary appeared before HASC and the Public Accounts Committee on 29 November and 4 December. They asked about payments that the UK had made and he explained at that point that payments in the 2023-24 financial year would be announced in our annual report and accounts next summer, for reasons of balancing the public interest. Since then, Ministers have agreed that Sir Matthew can now disclose the payments for this financial year. That is what happened.