Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and Baroness Hamwee

Report stage
Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich]

My Lords, I support Amendment 42 tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Bristol regrets that she cannot be in her place today to speak in support of this amendment, which she has signed.

The question of deterrence is central to the Government’s premise in the Bill. The threat of being removed to Rwanda should, in theory, be sufficient to discourage asylum seekers from taking dangerous crossings in small boats across the channel. Even if we accept that this will work for individuals trafficked to the UK against their will—I have not seen evidence that suggests it will—how can the Bill possibly have a deterrent effect? This point was made repeatedly in Committee, but it has not been adequately addressed.

There are as many as 4,000 people in the national referral mechanism who could potentially be eligible for removal. Can we not give them assurance that we will not subject them to further upheaval? The Global Slavery Index estimates that the rate of modern slavery in Rwanda is more than twice as high as the rate in the UK. Can we be sure that victims will be safe from the risk of re-trafficking?‘

The provisions of the Bill are incompatible with protective obligations, but potential victims will not even be able to put this injustice to the courts under the Rwanda treaty. Not identifying victims or sending them to another country before their claim has been properly assessed will also set us back in our efforts to bring perpetrators of modern slavery to justice. Victims are often the only witnesses of this crime; without them, the case against perpetrators will be significantly harder to make. Safeguarding victims of modern slavery from removal to Rwanda will have a negligible impact on the supposed deterrent effect of the Bill, and every effect on the safety and flourishing of the victims of modern slavery.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my name would have been on the amendment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, but I was not quite agile enough to get in as number four. The treaty provides at Article 13 that

“Rwanda shall have regard to information provided about a Relocated Individual relating to any special needs that may arise as a result of their being a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, and shall take all necessary steps to ensure that these needs are accommodated”.


If the Home Office rushes through its processes, as it will under the legislation of 2022 and 2023, I doubt that the individual needs will be adequately identified. It is hard enough to do even under the pre-2022 procedures.

Of course, what Rwanda is told is necessary and what it actually can provide are not necessarily the same thing, as has been covered pretty fully today. Its record is not exemplary. Just last year, the 2023 US Trafficking in Persons Report of 2023 told us that Rwanda

“did not refer any victims to services”.

That there were none is, to me, literally incredible.

The report also refers to widespread cultural prejudice, as we have just heard, along with a lack of capacity and resources that inhibits effective procedures, and so on. Referring to the words of the treaty as if that made them actually happen seems simply an extension of the argument of “The legislation says that Rwanda is safe and it therefore is”. What assessment have the Government made of the risks of Rwanda being safe in this respect? What assessment have they made of its capacity to provide services? Do they accept that Rwanda is able carefully to assess each individual’s risk of being re-trafficked? The risk in this country is enough—my goodness, what must it be there? Indeed, what assessment have they made of how those people sent to Rwanda by Israel disappeared? Common sense gives me a likely answer.