Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I will come back to that.

On 20 October 2023, the Home Office launched the consultation on the cap on safe and legal routes, to understand local authority capacity. This consultation closed on 9 January 2024. Home Office officials are currently reviewing those responses and are planning further engagement with the respondents through a series of regional dialogues to validate responses and to determine a capacity estimate. We will produce a summary of the consultation by the spring and, in summer 2024, the Government will lay a statutory instrument in Parliament which will then need to be debated and voted on, before the cap comes into force in 2025. Therefore, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, we have to wait for all those things to take effect. I have no doubt that this matter will be up for debate again after 2025.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Brinton, asked how we can deem Rwanda to be safe if we are granting Rwandan nationals refugee status in the UK. Rwanda is a safe country, which is what this Bill asserts. The meaning of a “safe country” is set out in Clause 1(5). However, our obligation when an asylum claim is lawfully lodged and admitted to the UK asylum process for consideration is to carry out an individualised assessment of a person’s particular circumstances. If, after that assessment, there is found to be a reason why a person, based on these individual circumstances, cannot be returned to their country of origin, then it is correct that we grant them protection. It is important to stress that people from many different nationalities apply for asylum in the UK and this includes—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, where, under Clause 4, an individual is seeking the court’s ruling on whether their individual circumstances might give them a reason to not be sent to Rwanda, might that be because they are able to argue that “It may generally be safe but it is not safe for me”? Will they be able to argue that, because they are homosexual or ill, it is not safe for them?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, quoting from the Bill in answer to the noble Baroness, it is

“the person in question, based on compelling evidence relating specifically to the person’s particular individual circumstances (rather than on the grounds that the Republic of Rwanda is not a safe country in general)”.

That is pretty straightforward. It is important to stress that people from many—

Security Threat to UK-based Journalists

Debate between Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, these debates have been rehearsed at considerable length over the past few weeks on the National Security Bill. I have nothing more to add. Obviously, SLAPPs are outside the scope of that Bill, but I am sure that we will come back to this subject frequently.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I too have great concerns about the use of our courts to silence journalists who are speaking truth to power, so I reinforce what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. But I also congratulate the Government for taking a strong stance on Iran. What happens to journalists also happens to lawyers, and it is a source of great concern to the International Bar Association and its Institute of Human Rights, which I direct.

We run a media freedom project that was initiated by the UK Government, and a growing source of alarm and concern is transnational oppression—the long arm of some of the worst states, the totalitarian states and those that are only too ready to kill, as well as to put journalists and human rights advocates in fear. We are seeing a greater expansion of that reach and I would like to ask whether that is being addressed inside government and the security services. We saw it in the murder of Khashoggi and in going after journalists internally and abroad. It is the same for lawyers; those who are confronting the Chinese are themselves having problems. Are we taking active steps to deal with that transnational oppression?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question and, yes, we are. The security services are very alive to these threats. She could have mentioned a number of others from recent memory, such as Litvinenko, Skripal and so on. We are very aware of the scope and scale of the emerging threats that she so eloquently described. I will not comment on the operational side of this, but I am very reassured that the security services are on top of it.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to reinforce what others have said about the Bill being an affront to human rights and civil liberties. It is an anti-refugee Bill and an anti-asylum Bill and whatever the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, said about dismissing the concern for common humanity, it is a display of a lack of respect for our common humanity. What terrible detriment to the humanity of British people comes about from providing shelter to those fleeing persecution? What possible terrible detriment to the British people happened as a result of offering shelter to those who were fleeing Nazism and the concentration camps? The very idea of pushing boats back to the French coast is totally contrary to international and maritime law, as we have heard—but we do not even have to talk about its unlawfulness; it is about the morality of it.

Similarly, when we talk about offshoring and that proposal, it is not just unworkable, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, was saying; it, too, is a dereliction of our national duties under international law. How are people going to access legal advice of a proper standard that we would be able to rely on confidently? As others have said, the Bill creates a two-tier system for asylum seekers. To criminalise those who come to the UK because they have not secured advance permission is unconscionable, especially when there are no safe routes for most people to get here. People who are fleeing are coming in desperation; they are in fear of their lives and they take the most incredible risks to find sanctuary. When people speak, as the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, did, about the cost of doing so, it is often about whole communities putting together money in order to make it possible for that person to escape likely death.

The Bill does nothing to create legitimate ways of getting those who are at grievous risk to safety. It opens up, in fact, greater possibilities for traffickers and those who exploit those who are at risk. In September and October of this last year, along with a little team of lawyers from the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, which I direct, we evacuated 103 women—Afghan judges, lawyers, journalists and others—out of Afghanistan with their families. They were desperate because they were on Taliban kill lists and we have had to struggle desperately to find final destinations for them around the world. We are still waiting for the promised resettlement scheme here for Afghanis; it still has not come into existence.

The Bill in its current form would have prevented my Afghan women coming to the UK. My Afghan judges are evacuated in Greece, Greece having agreed to be a lily pad, a temporary landing place, but they would be group 2 refugees, which means that they would have to stay in Greece because, of course, it is a safe country to all intents and purposes. Desperate women are also in communication with me still who escaped over the border into Pakistan, Iran or other neighbouring countries. They, too, would be group 2 refugees, even if they have a relative who lives in this country who is willing to receive them. Of course, Clause 15 makes it inadmissible to claim a special connection even if you have relatives in this country.

The Minister is right that there is a crisis in the immigration system, but this Bill is not going to solve it. Around half of immigration appeals against Home Office decisions are successful in the First-tier Tribunal. One-third of judicial reviews against the Home Office are settled or decided in the claimant’s favour. That tells you something loudly and clearly about the quality of the original decision-making in the Home Office—it is abysmal. The starting position is to say no when people apply to enter this country. So, in asking for ideas of how to improve the system, if you want to run a well-run system there has to be better early decision-making, access to proper legal advice and properly run courts and tribunals. But, instead of strengthening early decision-making, the Home Secretary is weakening appeals, creating fast-track processes that are unlawful and increasing her own arbitrary powers, taking to herself the power to accelerate hearings at such speed that there are likely to be illegal outcomes.

There is a whole set of clauses that I could refer to which deal with putting at speed decision-making without the proper legal advice that would make decisions safe. There is a whole set of proposals that we should be concerned about. I want to reinforce what was said by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, about how people who have been trafficked and have come here are modern-day slaves, yet the discretionary leave to remain system is not working for them. In the past five years, only 7% of those of 6,000 survivors have been given discretionary leave. I hope that this Bill will accept amendments to change that, because it has got worse under the current Home Secretary. Likewise, I hope that Damian Green’s amendment in the other place to accept more of the young from Hong Kong might be considered.

Efficiency cannot be bought at the price—

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am very sorry, but there is a five-minute Back-Bench speaking limit. Everybody else is managing to keep more or less to it.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I hear the noble Lord. Efficiency cannot be bought at the price of reduced fairness. My advice to government is: improve the quality and accuracy of first-instance decision-making and bring back proper legal aid in this area of law.