Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I was first elected to this House on the same day as Tony Lloyd in 1983. He was a brilliant friend and comrade who voted against the Iraq war, student tuition fees and the renewal of Trident, and he was a brilliant shadow Northern Ireland Secretary. He will be much missed by many good people all over this country.

This Bill is an appalling piece of legislation. It fails to take any account of the human suffering of people who are forced, through lack of any other alternative, to try to make a very dangerous crossing of the channel. I have met people in Calais who are desperate, poor and confused, and have travelled from Afghanistan and other places. They are victims of war, human rights abuse, poverty and so much else. The Government are now claiming that the only way to deal with the issue is to attack what they euphemistically call “a foreign court”, when in reality that court is the European Court of Human Rights, which is part of our judicial system. They are trying to offshore their obligations under international law and treaties.

On the global stage, it is the wealthy countries, such as Australia and Britain, that want to offshore issues surrounding asylum and the rights of people to seek asylum, and pretend that somehow or other they are doing the world a favour. We have to work with other countries to deal with the issue of the desperation of so many refugees in Europe, and far more in other parts of the world.

The Bill blames those people for being victims and plays into the narrative of the most backward, horrible remarks made in our national media and newspapers about asylum seekers, without ever recognising that those people who have sought asylum legally in this country—it is always legal to seek asylum; that is there in treaty—will eventually be our doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers of tomorrow, as they are all over Europe. The Bill plays into this racist trope against refugees all over the world, and attacks refugees because of where they come from.

I hope that the House tonight rejects this Bill. I hope that, in future, we do not come back to this kind of debate, but instead start to look at the issues of human rights abuse, victims of war, victims of environmental disaster and the needs of those people to be cared for on this planet as fellow human beings, rather than making them out to be the enemies that they certainly are not. Desperate people are looking for a place of safety. Surely it is our obligation—[Interruption.] The Home Secretary is getting very excited, but it is his obligation to try to make sure that they do have a place of safety in which to survive for the rest of their lives.