Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

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

[Robert Jenrick]

I know that the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), said that he did not watch box sets, but here we are once again for the next episode of this drama. It is also the most important one of all, because this is likely to be the final opportunity for this House to consider the Bill. Does it work? Will we be able to stop the boats? Can we secure our borders? As Members in all parts of the House know, I feel passionately that illegal migration is doing untold damage to our country, and we have to make sure that the Bill actually does the job.

I want to speak to two amendments, but one in particular, and that is the one with respect to rule 39. Let me say at the outset of this debate that I do not believe that our membership of the European convention on human rights is sustainable. I think that that will become clearer and clearer to the British public in the months and years ahead, but that is not the purpose of my amendment today and it is not the subject of this debate. That is a discussion for another day. What we are discussing here is whether we believe it is appropriate for a foreign judge in an international court to impose a late-night judgment, often without the United Kingdom being able to give its own arguments or to hear the reasons for that judgment; whether we think that that really accords with the rule of law, particularly in relation to this policy; and whether we are willing to see the same thing happen again that happened in the summer of 2022, when a judge did just that, grounding the flight and preventing the policy, leading to months, indeed years, of legal action and tens of thousands of illegal migrants breaking into our country, costing our taxpayers billions of pounds, imperilling lives in the channel and perpetuating this challenge for years to come.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am happy to support my right hon. Friend tonight on this amendment, as I did last night. I am on the Council of Europe, so I take quite a lot of interest in this. There is an established legal principle that, in fact, the judge was acting ultra vires in 2022 and that it was not in his powers to do that. There is also an established legal opinion that our Government could actually have ignored it. How does this relate to my right hon. Friend’s amendment?

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The plan is also unworkable, because there is no evidence that sending just a few hundred asylum seekers will deter the tens of thousands who are crossing the channel each year. Desperate people who have risked life and limb crossing continents to escape violence and persecution are not going to be deterred by a less than 1% chance of being sent to Rwanda. Of course, we know that in addition to being unaffordable and unworkable, the scheme is unlawful, as has been found by the Supreme Court, owing to Rwanda’s not being, as it stands, a safe country. Yet here we are again, being forced to indulge the fantasies, fixations and psychodramas of Conservative Members.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We have heard that before, but let us address the narrow legal point. Does the hon. Gentleman think that it was right for a Strasbourg judge to impose an injunction in the night, on his own, without giving the British Government the chance to make their case?

[Stephen Kinnock]

What we are seeing is complete shambolic incompetence in the asylum system, and if cases are not made clearly and are open to legal appeal, legal appeals will come and, in some cases, will succeed. On the broader point, the UK is party to a number of international agreements and conventions. That reality is extremely important to our national interest. In many cases, it strengthens our sovereignty, not weakens it. So Labour Members are clear that politics is about choices, and when we look at the bigger picture of our country’s place in the world, it is absolutely clear that our sovereignty and national interest are strengthened, not weakened, by being party to these international agreements and conventions.

It is deeply troubling that every day seems to bring a new example of the tail wagging the dog. We now hear that the Prime Minister is assembling 150 judges and 1,000 staff to fast-track Rwanda cases through our courts. Sorry—what? Does he not know that under his leadership and on his watch, the Crown court backlog in this country is at a record high of 65,000? Victims of serious crimes regularly wait more than two years for their day in court, so that they can seek justice against the perpetrator. The system is completely broken because of 14 years of Tory incompetence and indifference, yet the Prime Minster clicks his fingers and, glibly, is apparently able to magic up 150 judges and 1,000 staff. Where on earth have those 150 judges been hiding all this time? Are they going to be new recruits or are they currently working? If it is the latter, are they going to be told to drop everything and transfer to dealing with asylum cases? I trust the Minister will be able to answer those questions today, but I am not holding my breath.

Regardless of the operational issues, imagine the impact the Prime Minister’s glib announcement yesterday would have on you if you were a rape victim who has been languishing for years in our broken judicial system. Imagine the anger and disgust you would feel at the spectacle of a Conservative Prime Minister sacrificing your fight for justice on the altar of his desperate attempt to cling to power by appeasing his Back Benchers. What an utterly shameful and shabby way for the Prime Minister of our country to behave.

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[Sir John Hayes]

In that pithy intervention, my hon. Friend has described much of the fundamental problem of allowing what my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) described as a foreign court with foreign judges to determine outcomes that directly affect the interests of this country.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will my right hon. Friend give way, on that point?

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) advanced so many compelling arguments in her intervention that I want to deal with all of them before I give way to my right hon. Friend.

There are three aspects of this. The first is that our judicial system is not common but particular and special, being rooted in English common law but also, largely owing to the separation of powers, meaning that our courts are independent from the legislature and the Executive, so we have a strong tradition of both judicial quality and judicial independence. That is not true of many other countries in Europe. I am now happy to give way to my right hon. Friend, who will elaborate.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

People talk about the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg as if it were rather like our own Supreme Court or that of the United States but, as I said earlier, I am a member of the Council of Europe, so I know exactly how these judges are appointed. We in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe appoint them: it is the one power that we have. We are given three names, and we have very little information about who those people are, but it is undoubtedly true—there is evidence of this—that more and more of them are not, like our judges, distinguished lawyers and judges; they are, for instance, human rights lawyers and academics. What is worse about the process is that, unlike our judges, they are not appointed through an independent process. The political groups in the Parliamentary Assembly, dominated by the socialists and the federalist Christian Democrats, join together to appoint the most federalist pro-European judge.

[Sir John Hayes]

It is that to which I was alluding. The separation that exists in this country between the judiciary and the legislature in the political process and the process of justice simply does not apply in many of the other countries in Europe, and it certainly does not apply further afield. There is a problem of the politicisation of the courts and also, as I said earlier, there is a problem of quality, both of which were referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales and my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough.

Secondly, there is an issue of accountability. The point about law in this country is that it is made in this place. The reason why that is so significant is that this place derives its legitimacy from elections—democratic and fair elections. We were empowered to make laws in this Parliament because we were accountable and answerable to the people. As soon as we subsume that accountability into some pan-national arrangement, especially the kind outlined in my hon. Friend’s intervention, we weaken this House, and by weakening this House we weaken the people who send us here. That is partly why their view of the world is so at odds with what I described earlier as the political elite, although what I really mean is the bourgeois liberal elite who dominate far too much of the establishment in all its elements.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

There is a bourgeois liberal incarnate!

[Sir John Hayes]

I exclude the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale. He is liberal but he is not bourgeois—at least, as far as I am aware.