Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

The evidence that we have provided, and the commitments made by our Government and the Government of Rwanda through this internationally binding treaty, show that Rwanda is a safe country, and enable the Bill to deem Rwanda a safe country. As I am sure those who support and will vote for this amendment know, it would render the Bill utterly pointless and would not enable us to create the deterrent that we need to stop the boats and get flights off the ground.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Michael Tomlinson]

I will not. Turning to Lords amendment 7B, we know that assessing age is inherently difficult, but it is important that the Government take decisive action to deter adults from knowingly claiming to be children. There are obvious safeguarding risks relating to adults being placed in the care system. It is crucial that we take steps to safeguard children, and avoid lengthy legal challenges that prevent the removal of those who have been assessed to be adults. The amendment would result in those who are to be removed to Rwanda under the Illegal Migration Act 2023 being treated differently from those who are being removed to another country under the same Act. There is simply no justification for that differential treatment.

[Barry Gardiner]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I always enjoy taking interventions from a fellow Welshman, but I feel that the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) was well and truly put in his place by your riposte.

[Barry Gardiner]

Will my hon. Friend take an intervention from a non-fellow Scotsman?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I will.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am sure that my hon. Friend has, like me, marvelled at the Government’s ability to legislate for Rwanda to be a safe country—Lords amendment 2 addressed that. Will he join me in urging the Government to use their amazing power to legislate to ensure that carbon dioxide emissions no longer cause global warming, and sugar, fat and alcohol no longer damage human health?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am sure that those on the Government Benches would be delighted to oblige. Perhaps we could also legislate to say that the sky is green and the grass is blue, or that the Welsh rugby team actually won the last Six Nations—I would love to pass a law to secure that objective.

Let us be clear: not one of the amendments before us prevents flights to Rwanda taking off. On the contrary, they simply seek to put in the Bill what Ministers have previously promised—namely, they would ensure that the Bill was lawful, that the Government would protect the most vulnerable, and that we would stand by those brave Afghans who supported military efforts.

Let me address each amendment directly. I will focus first on Lords amendment 10B, in the name of the noble Lord Browne. We have spoken a lot about the unworkability and unaffordability of this policy, but we should also talk about the unethical and frankly un-British nature of deporting halfway across the world to Rwanda those Afghans who have supported Britain’s defence and diplomatic efforts. That is not Operation Warm Welcome; it is operation cold shoulder. We should have seen it coming, given that for an entire year the Prime Minister halted flights from neighbouring Pakistan for Afghans who had been granted resettlement rights in the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, and restarted them only when the Pakistani Government threatened to send those Afghans back across the border to meet their fate at the hands of the Taliban. We owe a debt of honour to the Afghans who were loyal to Britain and put their life on the line, and of course, our moral duty is most strongly felt by British armed forces personnel who worked alongside them.

In fact, this weekend, 13 senior military figures signed a letter to The Sunday Telegraph warning that

“‘any brave men and women who have fought alongside our armed forces or served the UK Government overseas’ must be exempt from removal to Rwanda.”

The signatories included former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, a former Secretary-General of NATO and a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. They warn that if this exemption is not granted, it will do

“grave damage to our ability to recruit local allies in future military operations”,

and explain that they have

“seen first-hand the enormous courage and dedication shown by those who have fought alongside our Armed Forces and served British interests abroad, often at huge personal risk, and we take personally Britain’s obligation to honour the debt we owe to that cohort.”

Those are powerful words indeed. I urge Government Members to join us in supporting Lords amendment 10B, which seeks to prevent that travesty.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

The whole point of this is that we do not have a crystal ball. The evidence of what happened six years ago should clearly give us some cause for concern. All that this amendment seeks to do is create a position whereby the independent monitoring committee, handpicked by the Government, is able to advise the Home Secretary on laying a statement, which is absolutely fair enough.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I listened carefully to the intervention that referred to 30,000 refugees in the past decade. Is my hon. Friend aware that within the past 12 months the UK has accepted a refugee from Rwanda?

[Stephen Kinnock]

It was not just one refugee; many refugees are taken from Rwanda by this country, which begs the question how safe Rwanda can be. All that the amendment would do is trust but verify. It would put in place the kind of mechanism that is embedded in thousands of pieces of legislation that are on the statute book. I simply cannot understand why the Government cannot simply accept the amendment and enable the Home Secretary to lay a statement on whether Rwanda is safe or unsafe. That would provide important safeguards. It is not in any way a wrecking amendment; just like all the other amendments that the Government rejected, it would not prevent flights from taking off.

At his press conference this morning, the Prime Minister boasted about the progress that he has supposedly been making to stop the Tory small boats chaos. Yet as he stood at the lectern, it emerged that small boat crossings have increased by 24% compared with the same period last year. Next, he refused to give details about the operationalisation of the Rwanda scheme, saying that

“we will not be giving away sensitive operational detail which could hinder all the progress made to date”—

or so he thought. It subsequently emerged that one of his Ministers had left behind under some chairs in the front row a secret document entitled “Official Sensitive”, which included—wait for it—operational details of how the scheme will work. You simply could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yet another day of chaos, empty boasts, and shambolic incompetence.

To be fair to the Prime Minister, he made one point in his press conference that Labour did agree with. In response to a question from the media, he clearly stated that the test for the policy will not be whether a few “symbolic flights” take off, as his former friend the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), the former Immigration Minister, said. In the Prime Minister’s words:

“Success is when the boats have been stopped.”

That is how he wants to be judged, and I assure the House that it is how Labour will judge him, and how the public will judge him too.

For two years, we have been urging the Prime Minister to stop the boasts and instead start stopping the Tory boats chaos. Sadly, he has chosen to ignore us on both fronts. Instead, we need Labour’s plan—[Interruption.]—to redirect the Rwanda money into a cross-border police unit to smash the criminal gangs upstream, and a returns and enforcement unit to remove those who have no right to be here, reversing the decline in removals that we have seen under this Government. Only Labour’s plan can fix our country’s broken asylum system—[Interruption.]—and only Labour’s plan can restore order at our border. [Interruption.] Conservative Members do not want to hear it, but that is the reality of the situation. I hope that every Conservative Member will join me in the Division Lobby this evening.