Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely]

I am sorry to have got to the debate a bit late. I will talk in general about some of the amendments; I am sympathetic to a lot of them. I always listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who is always eloquent on this subject and probably right in what he says, but I will explain why, despite my concerns about the ECHR, I will not support his amendments and the other amendments. That is because we are dealing with the art of the possible as well as the art of what is right and wrong.

I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) talk in apocalyptic terms, but he was right to say that there is a great deal of angst and concern. According to the recent poll, in my patch, like in his, more than 50% want people sent back without a right of appeal. I am therefore sympathetic towards that argument. I am also sympathetic to the concern of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark that the system will not work. But we are dealing with the art of the possible, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich says that we need 100% certainty and not 80% or 90%, I get a bit concerned.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that we should be focusing on the practicalities of what is achievable and recognise the tensions, in a broad debate, between what we can legislate for and what in reality will work within the limitations and the context, be that in respect of the courts or colleagues in this place, as well as what will work for Rwanda?

[Bob Seely]

Absolutely. If the Rwandans turn round and say, “We’ve changed our minds,” we will be in a world of pain. I trust the Government. I think they have been naive in the past, but for Government Members to work on the basis that we will not trust our own Government and give them zero credit is going way too far in the other direction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. It is good to see him.

On rule 39, the pyjama injunction, where judges get out of bed in the middle of the night, I do not even know why our Government are still agreeing to abide by these rules. As far as I can see, it should be a matter of principle that rule 39 injunctions are advisory until such time as we wish to adopt them. Maybe the Minister has something he would like to tell us about that. It would be wonderful if he did. As part of the conversation, we are in a period of flux. As our electorate rightly become more concerned about issues relating to crime, sovereignty, and legal and illegal immigration, we start to talk about our relationship with the European human rights conventions. I am up for that, but now is not necessarily the time to do that.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely important point. Before he moves on to the last part of his speech, I want to press him a little further on the ECHR, as well as the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt). Does he recognise that some of the fundamental changes in the amendments are so great that they warrant a separate piece of legislation even if they were to come forward, so that this House could consider them in full and in detail, rather than them being attached to an extremely important Bill, where they could undermine its objectives as well as detract from the wider debate on the ECHR?

[Bob Seely]

I quite agree. I think that we are in danger of reverse-engineering a load of opinions on the European convention on human rights into a single Bill that is influenced by the ECHR, but is fundamentally about something else. I should like to see greater debate about the ECHR. I should like to see greater debate about the relationship between our laws and what we do about international conventions, being mindful and respectful of them while at the same time understanding—certainly this is my view—that our freedoms, our privileges and our rights as Britons do not come from post-war European documents.

We should remember where the ECHR came from. It was effectively written in part by ourselves to help Europe to recover from the appalling destruction caused by fascism, but also the threat of totalitarian socialism and totalitarian communism. Since then, we have seen what was a good document—partly because it was written by us—whose purpose was to help Europe to recover and get its legal and political dignity back become a target of politicised judicial activism. I believe that something that is a target of politicised judicial activism should not necessarily be overruling our own traditions, but I do find a tendency for that to happen.

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[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, which allows me to highlight the Government’s success in reducing the backlog, as the Prime Minister outlined at Prime Minister’s questions.

I do not shy away from the point that the Rwanda scheme is expensive. If the cost were calculated as the amount spent per person flown to Rwanda, it would be a very high cost indeed, but that is not the point of the scheme. The idea of the scheme is not that every single person who illegally crosses our border will be shipped to Rwanda but that it will act as an effective deterrent. If we send a few people to Rwanda, the criminal gangs and, more importantly, the people who pay them large sums of money will get the message that paying the criminal gangs to be ferried across the channel is no longer an effective way to gain access to the United Kingdom. If that is successful, as I believe it will be, it will be very sound use of money because it will not only prevent additional cost to our society and public services but will protect the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world, while righting a gross unfairness in our asylum system.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely important point, particularly on the costs. Is he aware that the President of Rwanda has been reported as saying that the UK could well be refunded if all the resource is not used because of challenges along the way?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I was not aware of that, but it adds grist to the mill and strength to the Government’s argument for proceeding with the Rwanda policy.