Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Report stage
Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister one question in the context of the provisions in Clause 4. Is it or is it not the Government’s policy that they will look at each individual case, regardless of any other evidence, even if it is only to decide that there are no merits in that particular person’s case?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak only once today, as I did on Monday. The Greens will vote for all the amendments that are called. Some Members of your Lordships’ House quoted the book Nineteen Eighty-Four on Monday, and I have a favourite quote as well:

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”.


It is the freedom to speak truth, even when the ruling party is declaring otherwise.

That is what we are debating today. We are debating whether this authoritarian Government can declare that the objective truth of facts decided by the courts can be overruled. If we allow it, it is another big step towards a dictatorship—intentional or not. I know that the majority of people in your Lordships’ House know that the Government are wrong. I also know that many still cling to the belief that the House of Lords should not vote to stop the Government passing the most draconian of laws.

What are we going to do once we have voted on our amendments, and tried to do our job of improving the Bill, when the Government then ignore us? Will we do nothing again? We did nothing last year when a Minister overruled a vote in this House and gave the police draconian powers via a ministerial decree. It was the first time a Minister had ever used a statutory instrument to overturn a vote in this House, but the Labour Party failed to back my fatal amendment. I look forward to being told that that piece of legislation is going to be repealed as well.

We are paid more than £300 per day to come here and talk and vote, but what is the point of all our hard work if the Government ignore us? Either your Lordships’ House starts to act in defence of our liberal democracy and against the extremists at the heart of government, or we abolish this place and create an elected second Chamber with some backbone. I look forward to more defeats for the Government in these votes.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, each and every amendment proposed to this Bill shows the sheer nonsense of it. We are being forced by this Government to deny reality. We are being forced to create an enduring piece of legislation that states the proposition that Rwanda is “conclusively” safe, which cannot be rebutted even by conclusive proof to the contrary. This is Alice in Wonderland; it is complete and utter nonsense.

I have signed Amendments 6, 20 and 26 in the name of the learned Lord—I am sorry, it is very late—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. I have tucked myself under his coat-tails because they are incredibly sensible amendments. They at least require the Rwanda treaty to be given effect and to remain fully implemented for the Act to have effect.

However, even with that, I am not sure that we can legislate that Rwanda is conclusively safe, so my Amendment 93 would go further. It would require the whole Act to be scrapped on the day that the Secretary of State is presented with evidence that Rwanda is not conclusively a safe country. Noble Lords might call this a wrecking amendment; I would call it a huge dollop of sanity in the mad world of this Bill. Surely the Minister and all other noble Lords should support this. Why would anyone want a piece of legislation to exist on the statute book with a key provision that

“Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country”,


if Rwanda is not conclusively safe? Rwanda is either conclusively safe or it is not. If it is conclusively safe, why do we need legislation to force decision-makers to treat it as such? If it is not conclusively safe, why would we force decision-makers to treat it as though it is? This clause is either pointless or plainly false. I struggle to see how this Bill was ever written. Did lawyers really write this Bill? I cannot believe that anyone is going to defend it when it is so patently stupid.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise just to say that I entirely agree with those who have said that we should look carefully at the direction of travel suggested by the amendments from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and encourage the Government to do the same.

It seems to me that the Government have got themselves into a pretty strange position. In proceeding with what they want to do, they have given themselves a binary choice: either legislate a fundamental untruth or find a way of establishing a system that will bring about and give confidence on the safety of Rwanda. If they do not want to do the former—and they should not—they must investigate ways of doing the latter.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

My Lords, when the Conservative Party came up with its absolutely brilliant slogan about taking back control, many of us, for whom it resonated, felt that it meant that our Parliament would be taking back control. However, over the past year it has become obvious that that is not how the Government see it. In fact, they are using Brexit as an excuse to take more control of the country, which of course is extremely undemocratic. In this Bill, they are trying to seize control from the devolved Governments and Parliaments, and that, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has just said, is extremely unhealthy for the UK. The Bill pretends to replicate what exists in EU law, but it has created a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, which is not at all what any of us were expecting. It is like a legal framework creating a bureaucratic bulldozer that the Government will use to grab more power.

It is obvious that this Government cannot win any seats in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, so they are using this Bill—this bureaucratic bulldozer—to force the elected Governments of the devolved nations to fall in line with Conservative Party policy. These amendments are important because they would stop that undemocratic move. Without them, devolution will be replaced with a sort of lowest-common-denominator system in which the devolved Governments will have to wait for the UK Parliament to take action on any policy or law that relates to the production, distribution and sale of goods and services in the UK before they can take action. That is clearly not what any of us expected. The devolved Parliaments must continue to have the right to make decisions on improving environmental standards and implementing other legitimate policies that will benefit their nations. Your Lordships’ House must amend this Bill and prevent yet another government power grab, and of course protect the rights of the devolved nations.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, now that we are leaving the scope of the single market, the characteristics of the UK internal market become very important; that is why I put my name down to speak to this group and, in particular, to Amendments 2 and 59.

Superficially, it is easy to assume that the UK internal market should, and will, share the principal attributes of the EU single market but, of course, that is far from certain, not least because of the circumstances surrounding it all. After all, the creation of the EU single market was first agreed by member states in an IGC, which is very different from what we are looking at now in this country. The new arrangements have come into being in somewhat different circumstances and across a single territory in which there has been devolution—and within that, the different components clearly have different perspectives.

There is now much less consensus and no prior agreement. In these circumstances, within a devolved as opposed to a federal system, there are potential procedural problems where the UK Government and the English Government—if I might be allowed to call them that—are coterminous. It is not desirable for the repatriation of European competencies to drive a coach and six through the devolution settlement in these islands. For this reason, I believe strongly that Amendment 2 is important to provide a legal framework around the political procedures repatriating these powers. In my view, it is particularly important—I speak as both a unionist and a supporter of the devolution settlements—that England does not emerge as a bully boy imposing its will on the other countries. To do that would be to take the high road to the break-up of the UK.

I also want to touch on Amendment 59, in the context of my chairmanship of the Cumbria local enterprise partnership. As a border region and part of borderlands, any form of potential discrimination—be it direct or indirect, intended or unintended—poses a very real threat to our economy, much of which is focused on both sides of the Solway Firth. Competition law, environmental law and a number of other more general categories of social law are essential components of market economies in our kinds of societies in the 21st century. As a number of speakers have said, there is a real conundrum at the heart of this between local autonomy, which matters, and British cohesion and homogeneity, which also matter. I very much hope that the Minister will spell out exactly how the Government see these things interacting, because, as always, the devil lies in the detail.

Infrastructure Planning (Radioactive Waste Geological Disposal Facilities) Order 2015

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, like previous speakers in this debate, I am a Cumbrian, and I declare that with pride. I also have a number of interests associated with Cumbria. They are in the register, but I am not sure that there is any particular need to enumerate them now.

I am not an enemy of nuclear power. I am not a fanatical supporter of it either; I stand in the middle. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, we have a lot of nuclear waste and we will have to deal with it. We are likely, almost certainly for the right reasons, to generate more of it in the immediate future. I come from that perspective.

In the context of discussion of any possible disposal facility in west Cumbria, it is important that we stop trying to blur the issues about the locality. In my view, Cumbria County Council is right in thinking that this is a matter that affects the entire county. I do not think that you can curtail the definition by saying that it is simply Allerdale and Copeland. It may be that they have a greater interest than the rest of Cumbria, but Cumbria as a whole has an interest that is different from the rest of the country. That is important and needs to be properly taken into account in considering this matter.

Secondly, it is important to appreciate that, in the context of the immediate history, the order is interpreted locally as sour grapes. It is perceived by a large number of Cumbrians that the Government in Westminster wished, one way or another, to get their way and have a long-term geological disposal facility in the county. Having set up a system to do that, when that form of democracy produced the wrong answer, rather like a number of countries in the Middle East and further afield, they just changed the rules. That is deeply unfortunate and has not helped the progress of the debate about this important topic.

Having said that, I want to touch on three things. First, in his opening remarks, my noble friend said that this relates only to a geological disposal facility in England. The nuclear industry in this island—in the United Kingdom—covers England and Scotland. What steps are being taken to ensure that there is a consistent and homogenous process across the two jurisdictions—if I can put it that way—to ensure that a sensible outcome is reached not only for the English, and not only for the Scottish, but for the country as a whole? That is very important. One thing that is deeply felt by those concerned about these matters is that, to put it in the vernacular, Scottish nuclear waste will be dumped at Sellafield and nobody will get in the way of that.

Secondly, going back to a point made by my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, if you write local authorities out of the process in the manner that has been described, how do you at the same time ensure that that will not take place in Cumbria without local support? Will the Minister spell out to us exactly how that local support will be measured and dealt with—and at what point in the process, because that is terribly important? I understand the argument that this is a national infrastructure project and that the way in which it is handled should take that into account. I am not criticising that, but, against that background, how, if it must have local support as a condition of proceeding, will that local support be measured?

Finally, it is also important in the context of the county of Cumbria that the proposal is not a stand-alone measure; it will bring a great deal of benefit with it. Against that background, it is very important that the benefits are spelt out and fully explained in the same detail and at the same time as the project itself. You cannot simply salami-slice the bits off each other. I very much hope that my noble friend will be able to give me some responses to the points I have raised that will reassure me.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am not Cumbrian and I have absolutely no connection with Cumbria—I live in Southwark—but I support the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in his request that this order be withdrawn. It is clear that he was speaking from a democratic point of view, which is an incredibly valid thing to be concerned about. The fact that it is Labour legislation does not mean that it has to be used; there is a lot of quite bad legislation still on the books that really ought to be repealed.

There are a few environmental concerns expressed in a report called Rock Solid?, which was produced for Greenpeace specifically for this sort of action. There are concerns that have to be answered and the relative risks and dangers, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, have perhaps not been assessed as stringently as they might have been. For example, copper and steel canisters and overpack containing spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste could corrode more quickly than expected; we do not know. The effects of intense heat generated by radioactive decay and the chemical and physical disturbance due to corrosion, gas generation and biomineralisation could impair the ability of backfill material to trap some radionuclides.

The build-up of gas pressure in the repository, as a result of the corrosion of metals and/or the degradation of organic material, could damage the barriers and force fast routes out through crystalline rock fractures or clay rock pores. There are also poorly understood chemical effects, such as the formation of colloids, which could speed up some of the more radiotoxic elements such as plutonium. Unidentified fractures and faults, or a poor understanding of how water and gas might flow through the ground, could lead to the release of toxic materials into groundwater. These are concerns that cannot be ignored, and the order needs a little more research about whether this is an activity that can be supported with a view to complete public safety. I would argue that it is not, but I look forward to the Minister reassuring us.