Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

I am coming to the end of my remarks.

The Government will not even listen to these people’s stories, so what will happen to them and where will they live? This Government seem to have no consideration for the trauma people have gone through, and now they are leaving them in immigration limbo forever in this ridiculous, expensive and unworkable system. The asylum system is broken, and we know who broke it. We know that an independent Scotland would treat people far more humanely than this Government ever will.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for setting out in detail the changes and amendments the Government have made, both on the amendment paper and in their approach, in response to the concerns raised and points made by many in the earlier stages of this legislation. I will address the points made about Lords amendments 1B and 7B, and briefly touch on a couple of other points that have arisen in the debate and that, certainly from my experience in the world of local government, continue to have a relevance and will need to be addressed in due course if this is going to take effect in the way that we wish it to.

I am a great enthusiast for the European convention on human rights, and I think it is important to acknowledge in the context of this debate that, since this House previously considered and debated this particular piece of legislation, there has been a further development in respect of rule 39 interim orders. In fact, the various bodies concerned with the operation of that convention, including the Court, have recognised the concerns caused to the UK Government and other member states of the ECHR by the way in which those judgments had been handed down. I have confirmed that they will be updating their procedures to ensure operation of such orders will be different in a way that reflects the concerns expressed by many in this House. I see that as evidence that the ECHR remains a living document and also that the concerns the UK Government have expressed are being taken seriously.

Many Members will have been slightly alarmed by the recent judgment handed down in respect of environmental legislation, and I note that British judge Tim Eicke, whose dissenting commentary on that judgment has been publicised widely, set out in detail why many of the issues raised by Members of this House in respect of this particular piece of legislation were also relevant in that context—the risk of perceived overreach of developing a living document to the point where it went beyond the level of consent which the original contracting parties had in mind and that that remained something that the court needed to be alive to. I am very conscious that, because of the way the convention operates in practice, it should be an accountable process—accountable to the Parliamentary Assembly, to the Congress, to the Council of Ministers, and ultimately to the member states.

[Patrick Grady]

Does the hon. Gentleman think it is helpful for the Prime Minister and the former Home Secretary the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) and various others on his Benches to continually refer to the European Court of Human Rights as a foreign court?

[David Simmonds]

I know the Prime Minister has made the point that, given that the court is based in Strasbourg, certainly in a technical sense it can be described as that, but from my perspective, having served on the Congress, I am very much aware that it is a court of which the UK, partly through its role in the creation of the treaty of London which set up the convention in the first place, has always been an enormous supporter. We need to continue to play a part in ensuring it develops in a way in which we would wish to see it develop, through the input that Members of this House among others have through the Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Ministers and that other parts of the British political family have through bodies such as the Congress.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and I am not aware that I am a foreigner, but it has many difficulties and we are missing the essential point. For what it is worth, I support this Bill, but I am concerned that, in the absence of these people who land here being detained, if they are threatened with being deported to Rwanda at some stage in the future, they are simply going to bugger off into the community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I will forgive the right hon. Gentleman on this occasion: they will disappear into the community. I call Mr Simmonds.

[David Simmonds]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for highlighting that in a way that I am sure many of our constituents would choose to highlight it as well.

To finish the point around the convention itself and amendment 1B, as the Minister said at the Dispatch Box, when we cannot be certain of a future potential legal challenge it is appropriate that the statement is made as it has been made in respect of this. However, it remains my view, and I think the view of many others, that we have many channels of influence, both diplomatic and political, and that this is a living convention. We know that it is embedded in many different parts of our constitution—not just the Good Friday agreement, but our withdrawal agreement from the European Union—and therefore our adherence to it remains incredibly important. But because it is a living document it is able to flex and evolve, to recognise that the world we see today—the world of asylum and the international context—is different from the world when the treaty of London was first very strongly championed by Winston Churchill in the 1950s. Therefore, I am very much persuaded that the Minister is correct in the way he seeks to reject these amendments while also acknowledging the spirit and tone behind them.

I would like to address some of the issues that arise in amendment 7B. I am again persuaded by what the Minister has said about this, but there is a long-standing issue with the way unaccompanied children are treated. The Children Act 1989, which set up the legal framework, sets out in some detail that a child who is not accompanied by a person who has parental responsibility for them by operation of law becomes the responsibility of a local authority. Whether or not that local authority goes through any process at all to bring that child into the care system formally, for example by seeking a care order, it remains the responsibility of the local authority where that child arises to take care of them. If they return later on in early adulthood and are able to make a case that they had been present in that local authority area as a child, they are also entitled to care-leaving responsibilities from that local authority under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000.