Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Lord Green of Deddington

Report stage
Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief. Some important points have been made, but I want to focus on the exact drafting of Amendment 3, which is clearly central and what the vote will be about. The puzzling aspect is that new subsection (1B) makes the condition that

“the Secretary of State has considered all relevant evidence … and is satisfied that the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country for the processing of asylum and humanitarian protection claims”.

Fine, no problem, but then it goes on to say:

“before successful claimants are returned to the United Kingdom by request of the Secretary of State under Article 11(1) of the Rwanda Treaty”.

I have looked at Article 11(1), and it does not say that. It says:

“The United Kingdom may make a request for the return of a Relocated Individual”.


Paragraph 12(c) of the Explanatory Notes describes that as a response

“to the Supreme Court judgment by … Creating a mechanism for the UK to require the return of a Relocated Individual”.

Which is it? Does this provide for the Secretary of State to bring people back or, as the noble Baroness implied, is that the outcome that is the purpose of the whole thing? I think that is the case, but the language needs to be cleaned up, or perhaps the noble Baroness would confirm it so that we know what we are voting for.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to my old friend Lord Cormack, whom I knew for 60 years. I first met him when I was fighting the then ultrasafe Labour seat of Mansfield and he was fighting the ultrasafe Labour seat of Bassetlaw next door in the 1964 election. From that time, he was a very good personal friend of mine for well over 50 years in Parliament, when we both got there on a rather better basis for our political careers. He was an extremely good man. It has to be admitted that he was always regarded as speaking too much in the Commons and the Lords, as he was always forthright in his views, but that rather ignores the fact that overwhelmingly he spoke very sensibly and extremely well, and the principles that guided him throughout his political career were extremely sound. We will all miss him.

I will not repeat the arguments that I have made previously. I just acknowledge that my noble friend Lord Hailsham has made a speech every word of which I agree with. The Government are in an impossible position. Another good personal friend, my noble friend Lord Howard, made a brilliant attempt to defend that position and to try to demonstrate that the Bill is compatible with the things that he holds as dear as I do—the rule of law and the separation of powers—but I fear that he fails. His arguments might apply if we were talking here about a matter of political judgment on a given set of facts that the Government were making a policy decision about. However, the Bill is solely about asserting a fact as a fact regardless of any evidence, and regardless of the fact that five Supreme Court judges unanimously considered that evidence and came to the conclusion, which is not too surprising, that Rwanda is not a safe country.

I cannot recall a precedent in my time where a Government of any complexion have produced a Bill which asserts a matter of fact—facts to be fact. It then goes on to say that it should be regarded legally as a fact interminably, until and unless the Bill is changed, and that no court should even consider any question of the facts being otherwise. It is no good blaming the Human Rights Act; I do not believe that it was in any way probable that the British courts were going to come to any other conclusion. If the Labour Party allows this Bill to go through, I very much hope there will be a legal challenge. The Supreme Court will consider it objectively again, obviously, but it is likely that it will strike it down again as incompatible with the constitutional arrangements which we prize so much in this country. I too will be supporting any of the amendments in this group as introduced. It is a very important principle that we are seeking to restore.