Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Caroline Johnson and Alison Thewliss

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

I will make a little progress, because I am mindful of what Mr Deputy Speaker said about time. I want to touch on the misinformation that the Minister put forward about Rwanda and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The transit agreements are not the same at all as people being permanently relocated to Rwanda. The UNHCR has mentioned that Norway, Sweden, Canada, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and the USA have taken people from the transit camps. People have come from 10 countries, including Sudan and Cameroon, to Libya and to the transit camps in Rwanda, and then are being moved on elsewhere. They are not staying in Rwanda permanently. Indeed, reports from the transit camp have highlighted that people have no desire to stay in Rwanda in transit camps, because of the conditions in which they are living, so the Government are not at all talking about the same thing there. They should be absolutely clear on that and not mislead the House with points that suit their arguments.

Lords amendment 2 in the name of Lord Hope of Craighead would ensure that Rwanda could be designated as safe only if the treaty was adhered to. It states that Rwanda

“will be a safe country when, and so long as, the arrangements provided for in the Rwanda Treaty have been fully implemented and are being adhered to in practice.”

Among the Supreme Court’s concerns about the matter was the fact that Rwanda is not yet in a place where it can adhere to all those arrangements in practice. Perhaps it will in future, but it is not safe now. To declare it completely safe in all circumstances right now is a false argument.

Lords amendment 3 would create an obligation on the Government to report to Parliament on the terms of the treaty and how those are being monitored. That is perfectly reasonable. What are the Government afraid of? After all, if they think Rwanda is safe and fine, why do they not want scrutiny of the situation? It needs monitoring. There are continued reports of what the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels are doing on Rwanda’s borders. This legislation is a poor way of gauging safety. It is not flexible or reasonable, and cannot take account of changing circumstances. Circumstances can change rapidly and unexpectedly, but we are legislating to say that Rwanda is safe in all circumstances in perpetuity. That is clearly ludicrous and giving a hostage to fortune; the Government should be aware of that.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady makes the point that things change with time. Does she accept that many measures have been put in place by the UK Government and the Rwandan Government since the judgment of the UK Supreme Court last year?

[Alison Thewliss]

It is difficult to tell, because scrutiny mechanisms are not in place that would allow Committees of this House to ascertain whether that is entirely the case. The Committee that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) is on has been to visit Rwanda, and she has information about that visit that she hopes to share with the House. I understand that the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) was on that trip, too, but that is not good enough. There needs to be further, continued scrutiny, and it is important that Parliament has the opportunity for that.

I know from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), that even information on the deal has been difficult to come by. Last week, in the Chamber, we discussed the obfuscation and secrecy surrounding the costs of the plan. If this is how the Government are beginning this journey, we can have no confidence—on this side of the House, certainly—that they can be trusted, which is why Lords amendment 3 is so important. The House needs a scrutiny mechanism.

[Dr Johnson]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

I am conscious of what you said about time, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I should like to make some progress.

In Lords amendment 4, Lord Anderson of Ipswich proposes to add to the words

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

the words

“unless presented with credible evidence to the contrary”.

I agree that evidence is important. If judges and other decision makers are not allowed to make decisions on the basis of evidence, rather than relying on a bit of legislation drawn up in a short period, the Government have zero credibility. They are asking people to blindfold themselves to any other circumstances, and not to heed any evidence or proof. There must be an opportunity for every decision maker to treat the evidence with the due diligence that we would all expect.

Lords amendment 5 would remove the parts of the Bill that state that Rwanda should automatically be considered a safe country; it provides a rebuttal mechanism for the assertion of safety in Rwanda. Liberty says that the amendment corrects

“a deficiency in the Bill whereby Parliament is asked to state that Rwanda is and will continue to be safe, and there is no mechanism by which this can be revisited. This is a moderate safeguard”.

If the Government thought about this fully, they would surely conclude that the amendment would enhance the Bill; but they are, of course, rejecting all amendments, regardless of their source.

Lords amendment 6 effectively restores the power of the courts to make a factual judgment on the safety of Rwanda in an individual case, or for a group of people who share characteristics, such as LGBTQ people. I think it telling that the Minister said that it completely undermined the purpose of the Bill. “Well, good,” is all I can say in response. We should be trying to undermine the purpose of the Bill if its aim is, for example, to ship LGBTQ people off to a country that may not welcome them in all circumstances, without allowing them to check the position first. I think it perfectly reasonable to provide the ability to make judgments of this kind. I recall that at the back of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 was a list of countries with exemptions for particular groups of people—in some cases specifying men or women—but the Bill does not even do that. I think it entirely reasonable for there to be some way of questioning this power in the Bill.

Lords amendment 7, tabled by Baroness Lister, concerns issues related to the age of unaccompanied children, which I consider to be of the utmost importance. The treaty makes provision for what happens if a child somehow mysteriously ends up in Rwanda by mistake, but that only happens if the Home Office has made an error of some kind in sending the child there in the first place. We know from medical professionals that some of the age assessments are effectively pseudo-science. We know that when children have come here, having crossed seas, continents and war zones in very difficult circumstances, it may be more difficult to assess their age, because they have had a much tougher paper round than my son, for example. We also know that not all children look exactly the same or present themselves in exactly the same way, although they may be the same age. We can all remember that when we were at school, there was always some great big guy with a beard and a hairy chest when the others were knee-high to a buttercup.