Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I will make some progress, and then I will give way to the right hon. Member.

The problem is that, even as the Bill stands, it risks breaking international law, and that makes it harder to get further returns agreements and to get the further security co-operation that we need with our nearest neighbours. It is also why, if the One Nation group supports it, that puts its members in a pretty impossible position. Clause 1(5) says that a safe country is

“a country to which persons may be removed…in compliance with…international law”.

Clause 2(1) says:

“Every decision-maker must…treat…Rwanda as…safe”,

even if it is not. So even if Rwanda does what it did over the Israel-Rwanda deal and breaches international law and sends people back for refoulement, even if Rwanda introduces new policies to send people abroad, even if there is a coup in Rwanda, even if Rwanda fails to stop organised gangs moving people to the border, even if asylum seekers are shot at in Rwanda—all things that the Supreme Court found had happened in the past—and even if the treaty is designed in good faith, if it fails, the Government are still saying that British courts cannot consider the facts.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way. I did promise to give way to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), and I will come back to him in the moment.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

Is there a fundamental difference between the Government deeming Rwanda safe and the Labour Government, as they did in 2004, deeming a whole list of countries safe in precisely the same way and with precisely the same legislative technique?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that that is not the case, because what the Government have done is both to deem and to remove any capacity for the courts to consider the facts.

We can see how absurd even Government figures think this is. The Home Office’s legal guidance, published yesterday, quotes legal judgments. One says that

“the court should not shrink from applying the fiction created by the deeming provision”.

Another states:

“The statute says that you must imagine a certain state of affairs; it does not say that having done so, you must cause or permit your imagination to boggle when it comes to the inevitable corollaries”.

The mind does indeed boggle. The problem for the Home Secretary and the One Nation group is that, even as it stands, the Government are effectively admitting that they are creating legal fictions. They are saying that rather than following the facts, the courts will have to follow those fictions instead, for the sake of a tiny scheme that costs not just £300 million, but possibly £400 million. It also sets a precedent.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

rose—

Legal Advice: Prorogation

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. I do of course agree with him that legal advice, and particularly the role of the Attorney General, is always difficult, because one polices and intersects a very difficult line between giving advice of an impartial, and politically impartial, character, and being a political Minister, but I hope that I have endeavoured to do that with all the conscience and candour at my disposal—and when I say to the House, as I do today, “I accept that we lost; we got it wrong on the judgment of the Supreme Court; but it was a respectable view on the law to take, and that view was taken by four of the seven judges who had opined up to the point of the Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court has made new law. Let us be absolutely clear: from now on, the prerogative power of Her Majesty, advised by the Prime Minister, can be the subject—the justiciable subject—of the court’s control, and that was a judgment that the Supreme Court was perfectly entitled to make. What the implications are for the future of our constitutional arrangements will have to be reflected upon in the coming months and years, but it is never wise to reflect upon a court case and its implications in the immediate aftermath of that case. It will have to be done carefully and deliberately, and this House will have to decide, ultimately, whether these matters and these powers are for this House to regulate and control, or whether they are for the judiciary; but, at the moment, the Supreme Court has spoken, and that is the law.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Attorney General’s acceptance at that point that the Government got it wrong in this case is very welcome. Will he now advise the Prime Minister and the Government to accept and agree with the content of the Supreme Court’s judgment—not just the obligation to abide by its conclusion—and, in particular, to accept that it is wrong for this Government, or any Government, to seek to prorogue Parliament for five weeks, rather than just for a few days, without giving any reason, let alone, in the words of the Supreme Court, a good reason, to the public, to Parliament, or to the courts?

[The Attorney General]

The judgment is clear. The Government are assessing its short-term and long-term implications now, but the right hon. Lady can be quite certain that they will abide by its ruling, and by the content and implications of its judgment.

Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Yvette Cooper

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

Article 20 permits both sides to consider, even when no final agreement has yet been reached, whether alternative arrangements might suffice to protect the stated objectives of the Northern Ireland protocol. If they do, both sides could agree to put in place those alternative arrangements before any final agreement had been reached.

It is important to remember that, when one says final agreement, it is of course possible, indeed likely, that it may be a series of agreements reached at different times. My answer to my right hon. Friend is that article 20 creates that ability, but it is not a unilateral right of termination. It does not give us a right to walk away. It creates a procedure and obliges the European Union to consider alternative arrangements that are not part of a final deal.

I think my right hon. Friend went on to ask me about article 50 and the time it might take. The period of years he mentions is probably far too long, but it is impossible to say. What one can say is that, long before any case is brought, the pressure bringing those cases to the Court would be telling upon the Governments of the member states and upon the European Union. The legal uncertainty would be intense, and it is a real factor that this House must weigh up in considering whether the protocol is something that it wishes to support.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I am trying to understand the Attorney General’s arguments in answer to earlier questions. He seems to be saying that the Northern Ireland protocol, including the close relationship with the single market and membership of the single customs territory, is such a good deal for UK businesses that EU member states would hate it and would be desperate to bring it to an end as soon as possible. Is that his view? Is that the Government’s view? If so, is he now arguing for us to stay in a single customs territory indefinitely and to keep a close relationship with the single market?

[The Attorney General]

What I do say is that the customs arrangement under the backstop produces the following advantages. We pay not a penny and our goods have free access, in fiscal and tariff terms, to the European Union, yet the regulatory framework that we have to observe is dealt with by way of non-regression clauses that are not enforceable either by the EU institutions or by the arbitration arrangements under the withdrawal agreement. They are policed solely by British courts and British authorities.

In those circumstances, what does it mean? It means that they have split the four freedoms. They have created a situation where we can have the regulatory flexibility that they cannot. They have granted access to the single market for no contribution, without free movement, without signing up to the common fisheries policy and without signing up to the common agricultural policy. For all those reasons, what I say to the right hon. Lady is that if it is painful to us, it will be as painful to them. Where we want to end up is an arrangement that suits us both. This suits neither.