Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Howard, with these amendments we are trying to stop the Government forcing us to lie. That is what we are trying to do.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I had the privilege of serving as a Cross-Bench member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, in her remarks. Indeed, she referred to the 50-page report that was finally agreed by a majority in the committee—it is a majority, not a unanimous, report—on 7 February. It was published today, as others have said, and is available in the Printed Paper Office.

In my remarks, I will say something about what the report has to say about safety. Before doing that, I will agree in particular with the tone of many of the contributions that have been made so far on this group of amendments. As always, my noble friend Lord Hannay put his finger on our international obligations, not least among which is the 1951 convention on refugees. It may well be that this is not written in stone and that there should be attempts to try to change and reform this in the climate of today’s demands—I am happy to give way.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for giving way. He has just referred to international agreements. Would he agree with me, therefore, that this Bill contravenes international agreements such as the UDHR and also the ECHR? I am reminded of the fact that the provisions of this Bill extend to Northern Ireland. Hence, this provision and this Bill undermine the very basis of the Good Friday agreement.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness; I was not intending to touch on Northern Ireland, but she is right that this does touch on the Windsor agreement and on our obligations to Northern Ireland, which are separate from those of the rest of the United Kingdom. I commend that section of the report. These are not my opinions; the report does touch on that question.

The noble Baroness also asked about our other obligations. We have many obligations, not just under the refugee convention but under the ECHR, to which she has just referred. The Government on this Bill, as on the Illegal Migration Bill, decline to give a compatibility statement because they cannot say that it will be compatible—although I know Ministers take a contrary view that there is uncertainty around that. However, if there is uncertainty, we must be very careful where we tread.

On the issue of our international reputation, I was very struck by the statement made by the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, which is referred to in the JCHR report. He justified what he was intending to do and has done in sending back 430,000 Afghan refugees to Pakistan. He said it was modelled on what we were seeking to do in the British Parliament. So, even though we know that is casuistry and extreme, nevertheless we can see where this argument can lead and the way in which it be used. So, yes, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, our international reputation can easily suffer.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark got to the heart of this when he said that legislating that Rwanda is safe does not make it so. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, touched on that point. Just saying an apple is a pear does not make it such. Saying that a dog is a cat does not make it such. It may be your opinion, but it is not true—and that is surely what we have a duty to try to do in this place.

On process, procedure and governance, during our debates on the Illegal Migration Bill and the treaty, I complained that we had not been treated properly as a Select Committee in the way you would expect Select Committees to be treated. Suella Braverman, the then Home Secretary, declined to appear before the Select Committee. We did not see James Cleverly in the context of this Bill. However, we did see the Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk, and I pay tribute to him for the way he delivered his evidence and took the questions we put to him. As the noble and learned Lord has just said, it is the duty of the Home Secretary of the day to explain the intentions of legislation. If there is anxiety about something as important as a compatibility statement, they should explain why they feel unable to give it.

My noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich rightly said that we are ill-equipped to make these decisions in Parliament. I did not serve as long as the noble Lord, Lord Howard, although we have the distinction of contesting the same parliamentary seat in the heart of Liverpool on separate occasions, or as long as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, but I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, said about the way in which legislation has traditionally been dealt with in another place and here. I cannot remember Select Committees being treated by Secretaries of State in the way that I have just described. Thinking all the way back to the British Nationality Bill 1981, on which I spoke many times, there were opportunities to hear the arguments, to discuss the implications and to make appropriate amendments. I have not felt that about this legislation or that which preceded it. I think it has been pushed through in a pell-mell way, bringing to mind the thought that, if you enact legislation in a hurry, you will end up repenting at some leisure.

Let me take noble Lords to page 15 of the report, which comes down to the role of the UNHCR and safety. “As of January 2024”, therefore as recently as last month,

“UNHCR has not observed changes in the practice of asylum adjudication that would overcome the concerns set out in its 2022 analysis and in the detailed evidence presented to the Supreme Court”.

The Supreme Court, not the House of Commons or the House of Lords, relied on the UNHCR when it came to a decision about questions of fact. The report states:

“UNHCR notes the detailed, legally-binding commitments now set out in the treaty, which if enacted in law and fully implemented in practice, would address certain key deficiencies in the Rwandan asylum system identified by the Supreme Court. This would however require sustained, long term efforts, the results of which may only be assessed over time”.


Well, clearly, we have not had the time to make those assessments, and again we are being urged to rush pell-mell. I will not detain the Committee much longer. One witness, Professor Tom Hickman KC, said:

“Parliament is effectively being asked to exercise a judicial function, to assess evidence, to look at detailed facts and, effectively, to distinguish the Supreme Court’s judgment, to say that things have moved on and it is not binding on Parliament—I do not mean in a non-legal way—in making its judgment. In my view, that is an inappropriate exercise for Parliament to conduct. It is a judicial function”.


This view was echoed by Professor Sarah Singer, who is quoted in paragraph 57 as saying:

“To contradict the Supreme Court in this way is, perhaps, not showing the respect to the court that should be owed as a constitutional principle”.


I conclude with the summary on page 35, which says:

“We have considered the Government’s evidence that Rwanda is now safe, but have also heard from witnesses and bodies including the UNHCR that Rwanda remains unsafe, or at least that there is not enough evidence available at this point to be sure of its safety. Overall, we cannot be clear that the position reached on Rwanda’s safety by the country’s most senior court is no longer correct. In any event, the courts remain the most appropriate branch of the state to resolve contested issues of fact, so the question of Rwanda’s safety would best be determined not by legislation but by allowing the courts to consider the new treaty and the latest developments on the ground”.


For all those reasons, I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has done noble Lords a great favour in bringing these amendments to us in Committee. She has already shown her willingness to think further about whether they might be applied in other ways. That surely is what Committee stage is all about. The tone that has been struck in the course of this debate behoves noble Lords to think very deeply. I commend this report to the Committee.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the tone of this debate, particularly in relation to the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I warmly welcome her obvious desire to find some way forward in this difficult area, which we certainly need to do, but I am afraid there is a rock—a difficulty—in the way of her amendment. It makes a classic mistake: taking two separate organisations with different objectives and obligations, and placing one with a veto over the other.

According to my reading of the amendment, the UNHCR would in practice have a veto over what the UK Government can do; this is the difficulty. The noble Baroness used the word “stalemate”, but her proposals would also lead to a stalemate while the UNHCR went on for ever, we know not when, saying whether Rwanda was safe. There would be debates, hostilities and probably no eventual consensus as to whether it was safe. Surely a more sensible way forward would be to take existing circumstances and practice, and for each side to engage properly and responsibly with the other.

We have obligations to the UNHCR; we are obliged under the refugee convention to engage with the UNHCR, and so we should. We are obliged to take account of the social and humanitarian consequences for refugees, and so we should. But, equally, the UNHCR should take into account the real responsibility of Governments to defend their borders in the sensible way that their own democracies would expect. If we can get the two working together, something sensible may emerge from that.

It already has in Australia. I wish we would not always be quite so insular. For 10 years now, Australia has been operating an outsourcing policy of the kind to which the UK aspires. It started off in precisely the same way—with precisely the advocates on each side—that we did. In the end, the Australian Government invited in the UNHCR at three different levels: the prime ministerial level, the ministerial level and the ordinary regional level of civil servants and so forth. They came to an agreement on how it should work.

Not only that but the UNHCR, as a consequence of its willingness to get involved, had leverage. It got out of the Australian Government more legal routes for genuine asylum seekers, and the same should happen here. Our legal routes for asylum seekers are at present wholly unsatisfactory, because they are confined to a small number of countries and most countries are excluded.

My view of a proper immigration policy has always been that there should be a settled cap on how many we should bring in, which we put publicly to the people every year in Parliament. Within that cap, the priority should be genuine asylum seekers and only thereafter economic migrants or people joining their families here. That is the right way to approach a total immigration policy, of which this is numerically only a very small part.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, it is simply the introduction to the Bill, so I am not entirely sure I get the drift of the question of the noble Baroness.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord concludes, can he say whether he will be formally responding to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, especially before we reach Report?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I have not yet had a chance to read the report, which I believe was published only today, but I will of course read it in due course and respond accordingly.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, no one could disagree with a word of that. I of course support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Browne. It makes me ashamed every time I see stories such as those that he has related. I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend—whatever persona he speaks in—and have added my name to the noble and learned Baroness’s amendment, which is of course about victims of trafficking and modern slavery.

As my noble friend Lady Brinton said, we will come next week to the position of children, which will include the question of age assessment. I hope that somebody in that debate will draw attention to the Government’s references to the young men who are really men, not children, when they come across the channel. I am sure that other noble Lords saw on our television screens the amazing darts player Luke Littler. He looked considerably more than a child—he looked about 35, in fact. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that the amendments from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, drive a coach and horses through the Bill. That is an interesting choice of words; they were the words that Theresa May used about the impact of the recent migration, immigration and asylum Bills.

The noble Lord also criticised the word “might”—that people “might” be in this position. Well, that is because we have a process, which is referred to in the amendment: the national referral mechanism. That is our mechanism for assessing claims of having been trafficked or being a victim of modern slavery and so on. It has its problems, particularly in delays, but it is a careful method of assessment that is not replicated in Rwanda. It involves the support of victims of modern slavery and trafficking, which is not available in Rwanda.

I am no less worried than I was when the Rwanda proposal surfaced. Far from tackling these evils, we are expanding the market and opening it up in that country to further trafficking and re-trafficking. It is a country where modern slavery, as has been said, is a good deal more prevalent than it is in the UK. And it is not just a matter of prevalence, it is a matter of culture—something to which the Supreme Court referred. The culture in Rwanda is not to assess whether people are vulnerable in this area. It shows no demonstration of understanding what modern slavery is or how to assess possible victims. If that sounds technical, it is technical in a way, but it is also about what happens to individuals at a human level. We have heard some very powerful speeches supporting that position.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I support Amendment 75, which was moved so powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and supported by my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup.

While they were speaking, I was struck by one paragraph in the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights which I referred to briefly in our proceedings on Monday: paragraph 119 on page 33. We referred to Afghanistan, and it was in this context:

“We have observed, however, that other nations may be influenced by the way in which the UK treats its international law obligations. For example, we note that the Prime Minister of Pakistan has already referred to the UK’s Rwanda policy in defence of his country’s decision to expel from Pakistan hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have fled from the Taliban regime”.


In reflecting on that, the committee said at paragraph 120:

“The UK has a reputation for respect for human rights and the rule of law, of which we should be proud. Legislation that seeks to disapply or fails to respect international law risks damaging that reputation and encouraging other states who are less respectful of the international legal order”.

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[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

I share the noble Baroness’s concerns about Rwanda because there are many areas about which we can be highly critical, but if we listened to some of the criticism of Rwanda as a country not only in this Chamber but in the media and elsewhere, we would conclude that it was incredibly backward and dangerous, which it manifestly is not.

On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made about Rwandan refugees specifically, Clause 4(1) states—the Minister can probably cover this:

“Section 2 does not prevent … the Secretary of State or an immigration officer from deciding … whether … Rwanda is a safe country”.


I humbly suggest that if there were a Rwandan asylum seeker here claiming asylum, they would be covered by that part of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to reply to those three points.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I would not want the noble Lord to proceed on the basis of believing that the JCHR, for instance, which I have been privileged to serve on, was critical of Rwanda. It is very much my view, too, that there has been progress made in Rwanda. What I was talking about before was the volatility within the region and how that can impact. Things changed dramatically in Rwanda, of course, leading to 800,000 people dying in the genocide there.

I draw the noble Lord’s attention to what the committee said on page 13. Talking about the Supreme Court, it said:

“Significantly, the Court did not hold that this was due to a lack of good faith on the part of Rwanda but rather ‘its practical ability to fulfil its assurances, at least in the short term, in the light of the present deficiencies of the Rwandan asylum system, the past and continuing practice of refoulement … and the scale of the changes in procedure, understanding and culture which are required’”.


Does the noble Lord agree?

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

I respect enormously what the noble Lord says. I would just push back slightly. The RPF and Kagame have a huge amount of support. They are running a very strong Government and when that Government sign treaties such as this one, I am confident that they will do their best to uphold their terms. I look forward to carrying on and making concords with the noble Lord, and to what the Minister will say in a moment.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I take the noble Lord’s point, and I deeply regret any errors that were made in regard to these personnel. I certainly hope that the investigations are rigorous, and if there is any suggestion of any malicious refusal, the full force of the law should be brought to bear. Those errors have been identified, partly because of the noble Lord’s campaigning, and I am assured that they have been corrected now. Therefore, the point stands: there are safe and legal routes to this country for personnel in these positions.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I will reinforce the point that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, has made and I am grateful to the Minister for his patience. The individual cases that I have referred to the Minister have failed to qualify under the ARAP scheme, and yet he, through his own interventions and those of other Ministers, has been able to rectify those issues; there will doubtless be similar cases in the future as well. Should we not at least have a review of how the schemes are running—an open and transparent process—and a review of some of the cases that have already been referred to the Minister, and to the MoD and the Foreign Office, so that we can see how many we are talking about and what is going wrong inside the system that those cases were turned down in the first place?

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am not sure whether I picked up in the Minister’s response that he included the cohort listed in paragraph (b) of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Browne; that is, not people who have supported our Armed Forces overseas but

“persons who have been employed by or indirectly contracted to provide services to the United Kingdom Government”.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to my old friend Lord Cormack, whom I knew for 60 years. I first met him when I was fighting the then ultrasafe Labour seat of Mansfield and he was fighting the ultrasafe Labour seat of Bassetlaw next door in the 1964 election. From that time, he was a very good personal friend of mine for well over 50 years in Parliament, when we both got there on a rather better basis for our political careers. He was an extremely good man. It has to be admitted that he was always regarded as speaking too much in the Commons and the Lords, as he was always forthright in his views, but that rather ignores the fact that overwhelmingly he spoke very sensibly and extremely well, and the principles that guided him throughout his political career were extremely sound. We will all miss him.

I will not repeat the arguments that I have made previously. I just acknowledge that my noble friend Lord Hailsham has made a speech every word of which I agree with. The Government are in an impossible position. Another good personal friend, my noble friend Lord Howard, made a brilliant attempt to defend that position and to try to demonstrate that the Bill is compatible with the things that he holds as dear as I do—the rule of law and the separation of powers—but I fear that he fails. His arguments might apply if we were talking here about a matter of political judgment on a given set of facts that the Government were making a policy decision about. However, the Bill is solely about asserting a fact as a fact regardless of any evidence, and regardless of the fact that five Supreme Court judges unanimously considered that evidence and came to the conclusion, which is not too surprising, that Rwanda is not a safe country.

I cannot recall a precedent in my time where a Government of any complexion have produced a Bill which asserts a matter of fact—facts to be fact. It then goes on to say that it should be regarded legally as a fact interminably, until and unless the Bill is changed, and that no court should even consider any question of the facts being otherwise. It is no good blaming the Human Rights Act; I do not believe that it was in any way probable that the British courts were going to come to any other conclusion. If the Labour Party allows this Bill to go through, I very much hope there will be a legal challenge. The Supreme Court will consider it objectively again, obviously, but it is likely that it will strike it down again as incompatible with the constitutional arrangements which we prize so much in this country. I too will be supporting any of the amendments in this group as introduced. It is a very important principle that we are seeking to restore.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief, but I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Lord Howard of Lympne, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, concerning Patrick Cormack, who was a dear friend of many of us. He was kindness itself to me when I became a Member of another place in 1979 and there were many issues on which we worked with one another, not least those around Northern Ireland. He did great service in uniting people around a complex and very difficult question during the years that really mattered. We were in touch with one another in writing just two weeks before his death. He had gone back to Lincoln to care for his wife Mary; he was deeply troubled about how ill she was, but he hoped soon to be back in his place. We will all miss him not being in his place and contributing to your Lordships’ House.

I would like to put just two points to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, or to his noble and learned friend Lord Stewart, whoever will reply on behalf of the Government. I put a question during Committee concerning the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, at that stage whether, before we considered this Bill on Report, we would have a proper reply from the Government to that Select Committee report. It is deeply troubling that there has been no reply and deeply troubling that Select Committees, not least one that is a Joint Committee of both Houses, can give a view about this Bill, specifically around the question of safety, and in a majority report say that it does not believe it right to say that Rwanda is a safe place to repatriate refugees to, yet not to have a response to those findings before your Lordships are asked to vote on amendments on Report. That is my first point.

My second point also concerns safety—the safety of our reputation as well. I was troubled to read in reports over the weekend that £1.8 million will be spent for each and every asylum seeker for the first 300 who are to be deported. That was described by the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place as a staggering figure. The Home Office declined to give information about it because of what it said was commercial confidentiality. I cannot believe that such a lame reply would be given, and I do not expect the Ministers to use that excuse when they come to reply today. It is not right for Parliament to be asked to take awesome decisions that will affect the lives of ordinary people, and to do so without giving all the facts being given to Parliament first.

I simply say that I have been reading the magnificent book East West Street by Philippe Sands KC. When we consider the way in which this country responded at that time to people such as Philippe Sands’ family, who had fled from Lviv, in what is now Ukraine, and when we consider the generosity of spirit and the response from people in both Houses of Parliament and all political traditions, that seems to contrast sadly—dismally—with how we are responding at this time through the Bill. I hope the Ministers will be able to reply to my points.

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[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, the point of the Bill is to move the matter into the diplomatic and political sphere. The Bill and the treaty make the point that the matters are better considered there than they are in the court. That is my answer to the point which my noble friend makes.

Regarding Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, I cannot accept that the provisions of this Bill undermine the rule of law. Amendment 2, implying that this legislation is not compliant with the rule of law, is simply not right. The Bill is predicated on Rwanda’s and the United Kingdom’s compliance with international law in the form of the treaty, which itself reflects the international legal obligations of the United Kingdom and Rwanda, as my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth pointed out following his recent visit.

As has been stated in the debates on this Bill, the Government take their international obligations, including under the European Convention on Human Rights, seriously. There is nothing in this Bill that requires any act or omission that conflicts with the United Kingdom’s international obligations. Along with other countries with similar constitutional arrangements to the United Kingdom, and again echoing points made by my noble friend Lord Murray, we have a dualist approach, where international law is treated as separate from domestic law and incorporated into domestic law by Parliament through legislation. This Bill invites Parliament to agree with its assessment that the Supreme Court’s concerns have been properly addressed and to enact the measures in the Bill accordingly. The Bill reflects the fact—going back to my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne’s opening points—that Parliament is sovereign and can change domestic law as it sees fit, including, if it be Parliament’s judgment, requiring a state of affairs or facts to be recognised.

The principle of recognising that certain countries are safe for immigration purposes, as your Lordships heard from my noble friend Lord Lilley, is a long-standing one that is shared by many other countries as part of their respective systems. The European Union states are not the only countries that may be safe for these purposes. Therefore, to act as the Government are proposing in terms of the Bill would not an unusual thing for Parliament to do. There is other immigration legislation in which Parliament recognises that states are generally safe. It is not akin to Parliament stating something to be the case contrary to the actual position. The Bill reflects the strength of the Government of Rwanda’s protections and commitments, given in the treaty, to people transferred to Rwanda in accordance with it. The treaty, alongside the evidence of changes in Rwanda since the summer of 2022, enables Parliament properly to conclude that Rwanda is safe.

In addressing other points raised on this matter, and echoing what I said in response to my noble friend Lord Clarke, my noble friend Lord Tugendhat moved the sphere of literary references governing discussion of the Bill in your Lordships’ House from Alice in Wonderland to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The point is not that the Government are proposing that Parliament should legislate contrary to the Supreme Court’s findings, but that Parliament should pass a Bill reflecting those decisions and acting on them. We are acting on the court’s decision, not overturning it.

I respectfully echo my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne’s point, which again echoed his important speech at an earlier stage, that the theme of this matter is accountability—the accountability of Parliament and the Government to face the consequences of their actions and decisions before the electorate.

The importance of Parliament’s judgment is the central feature of the Bill and many of its other provisions are designed to ensure that Parliament’s conclusion on the safety of Rwanda is accepted by the domestic court. The treaty sets out the international legal commitments that the United Kingdom and the Rwandan Governments have made, consistent with their shared standards associated with asylum and refugee protection. It also commits both Governments to deliver against key legal assurances, in response to the conclusions of the UK Supreme Court. We are clear that we assess Rwanda to be a safe country and we are confident in the Government of Rwanda’s commitment to operationalising the partnership successfully in order to offer safety and security to those in need.

In answer to a point made by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, while Sir Winston Churchill was instrumental in drawing up the body or making possible the creation of the European convention, he did not say anything to alter the constitutional principle of the supremacy of Parliament, to which I have made reference.

I return to matters raised in the submission of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. He posed two questions, the first on the receipt of an answer to points made by committees of your Lordships’ House. I have checked that and it is anticipated that answers to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Constitution Committee will be issued by Wednesday.

The noble Lord also raised costs. The point is not that doing nothing does not have costs. We will doubtless return, later at this stage of the Bill, to the enormous expense inflicted on British taxpayers—running to billions of pounds a year—by maintaining the status quo. It is that status quo that we seek to interrupt.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My point on the question of costs was not so much the £0.5 billion, but that the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place said that this was a staggering amount of money and that it was being veiled by so-called commercial confidentiality. When the Minister publishes his response to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Constitution Committee “by Wednesday”, will he undertake to provide further details unpacking the so-called “confidentiality” of this £0.5 billion?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

If the noble Lord will permit, I will defer answering that question until later.

So it is in order to prevent the current expenditure—the cost of housing asylum seekers is set to reach £11 billion per year by 2026—that the Government propose to act. As I have said, we assess Rwanda to be a safe country and we are confident in the Government of Rwanda’s commitment in that regard. I therefore invite the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, not to press his Amendment 2, and I also invite the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, to withdraw her amendment. If the amendments are pressed, I will have no hesitation in inviting the House to reject them.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

However much the noble Baroness heckles from a sedentary position, I will not sit down and I will finish my speech. Rule 39 interim measures, as we learned in Committee, were not in any meaningful sense court rulings per se and, more specifically, great British statesmen and jurists such as David Maxwell Fyfe, who has been quoted, and Winston Churchill never signed up to the court taking powers upon itself to make binding injunctions. This is at the very heart of these amendments. Indeed, it was debated and specifically rejected in terms. It is only since 2005, when activist judges were acting in the case of Mamatkulov and Askarov v Turkey, that the court has given itself a power ultra vires to the original convention—an important point enunciated previously by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and my noble friend Lord Sandhurst.

The clause that amendments today seek to strike down, eviscerate and render otiose is not an example of arbitrary power but a specific power for this Bill and a set of unprecedented geopolitical and economic circumstances: mass migration. It is not a blanket disregard but a specific power. In summary, Rule 39 rules were never part of the European convention or constitution and there is no evidence, other than the hyperbole in this Chamber, that the UK not being bound by these interim measures undermines our overall compliance with international law and our international obligations, responsibilities or undertakings. The irony of these amendments is that they lock in the UK to adherence to a regime that even the court itself accepts is suboptimal and needs urgent reform. These amendments offer a carte blanche to a broken system.

The court itself does not work in its efficacy and the power to produce a desired result, with 48% of leading judgments being unaltered and not acted upon in the past 10 years across all 46 members of the convention. We have a failing, politicised, secret and unreformed court that some noble Lords wish to legislate to usurp the sovereignty of our Parliament. For these and other reasons, I ask your Lordships to resist these amendments because they are not only consequential but dangerous.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief. I follow my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, in supporting these amendments. I simply say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that yesterday was the 78th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous speech in Missouri; it was entitled Sinews of Peace and it dealt with issues such as the Iron Curtain coming down across the Europe, and why Winston Churchill believed we needed a convention on human rights and supported the creation of the Council of Europe as the best buttress—alliances based on the rule of law—to preserve the peace of Europe and the world.

In the troubled times in which we live—the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, referred to the debate on these things in your Lordships’ House yesterday—the upholding of the rule of law, especially in the face of all that Putin’s Russia is doing in Ukraine, is paramount—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Lord has a proud and long-standing record of defending human and civil rights, which we all support and congratulate him on. However, does he not agree that a system in which you have an unnamed foreign judge in an international court imposing a late-night judgment, and which allows the UK no opportunity to give its own evidence or respond, or understand the evidence against it, is surely not an example of due process or, more importantly, the rule of law?

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I disagree with the noble Lord; the amendments are about interim measures. The Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, took evidence on this issue and I want to refer to that for a moment. Having heard the evidence, these were the conclusions of a committee of the sovereign British Parliament. In paragraph 105, we said:

“We recognise that there are differences of opinion over whether or not interim measures ought to be binding on the United Kingdom. However, as a matter of international law, they are binding. Failing to comply with interim measures directed at the UK would amount to a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights”.


On Clause 5, we said that the Bill

“contemplates a Minister choosing not to comply with an interim measure and thus violating the UK’s international human rights obligations. It also prevents the domestic courts taking into account what may be a relevant factor for any decision whether or not an individual should be removed to Rwanda. This is not consistent with a commitment to complying with the UK’s obligations under the ECHR”.

That was the committee’s considered, majority view; it is not a view that has been responded to by the Government. Here I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, or the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, when they come to reply, to go back to the Committee stage of this Bill, where they gave an assurance that, before we went any further, Parliament would be told the response to the findings of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As recently as Monday, I was told when I intervened on this point that there would be a response for today; I would like to know when it is going to be forthcoming.

It brings our Parliament into disrepute when we set up Joint Committees and say we will consider issues of this kind in great detail, and when reports have been made available to the Government, but no response has been forthcoming before detailed consideration of that legislation. Here we are, at the Report stage of a Bill that has gone all the way through the House of Commons, has almost completed its passage in your Lordships’ House, and we still have no proper response. When the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, defended, as he did earlier, the integrity and the nature of our Select Committee, I was with him, and not just because, like him, I have particular admiration for the chairs of Select Committees. The honourable Joanna Cherry is no exception in this respect. She is an admirable chair of that committee; she is not a partisan—ask members of the Scottish National Party and they will tell you that she is a very independent-minded lady who has considerable experience as a KC in the law, so chairs are not to be dismissed. These committees of your Lordships’ House should be taken far more seriously. Not to do so is a discourtesy to Parliament and to the kind of arguments that my noble and learned friend has put forward, and it is why, even if these amendments are not voted on today, the principles that underline them should be supported.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I promise I will be brief. First, there appears to be agreement that there was not total agreement on the position of international law. Noble Lords will remember the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman, referring to the article in Policy Exchange. This is not the time to repeat the arguments, one way or another.

It was also agreed that the procedure adopted by the European Court of Human Rights was sub-optimal and there is room for improvement. Improvement may come along the line in due course; we wait to see, and there are some hopeful signs. However, the current position is that it is not a satisfactory procedure.

We then come down to the power. It is important to stress that the Minister has a power, not a duty, which he or she can exercise to ignore the ruling. The Minister does not have to ignore the ruling, and no doubt they will look carefully at the reasons given. Amendment 37 suggests that the Minister will consult the Attorney-General, who I am glad to see sitting in her place beneath the Throne today. I imagine that in a normal course of events, a Minister taking a decision of that gravity would consult the Attorney-General. However, the fact that there is a slender basis for the jurisdiction, that the interim procedure is unsatisfactory, and that there is a power, seem to me to hedge around this provision with appropriate safeguards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

Oh, she is. Well, while she did not press the point again, there was none the less a Green-wedge approach, which included my noble friend Lord Deben, attacking the stance of the Opposition Front Bench. Noble Lords opposite are old enough and ugly enough to defend themselves, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, did so. On the aspects of my noble friend’s submission that attacked the Government, I say to him that his point is misguided. Of course, the French Government are not the European Union; they are acting in this context as a sovereign country and not as a member of the EU.

As I said, “serious and irreversible harm” is broadly the same test that the Supreme Court applies. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, went on to raise a matter in relation to the Constitutional Reform Act. This Bill takes the same approach adopted in Section 55 of the Illegal Migration Act; the Constitutional Reform Act is not referenced in the Illegal Migration Act. Under both provisions, it is for a Minister of the Crown alone, and not a court, to decide whether to comply with an interim measure. That reflects the orthodox position that international obligations act on the Government, rather than having effect on the domestic plane. It does not constitute an attack on judicial independence. There is no implied reform of Section 3 of the 2005 Act, which makes provision for the upholding of judicial independence. This provision remains intact and it is not necessary for legislation that does not bind judicial decision-making to spell that out. The judiciary’s independence is a fundamental principle of our constitution, as I think all noble Lords across the House will agree. The Government are committed to enabling judicial decisions to be made independently and impartially, whether domestically or in relevant international courts and tribunals.

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and gratefully acknowledge his courtesy in approaching me to chase up the correspondence to which he referred the House. I apologise that the Home Office carrier pigeon failed to reach Ipswich before today. I have a copy of the letter that he sought and, with his leave, and that of the House, I will read the relevant provision.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before the Minister leaves that point about carrier pigeons, can he say when the response from the Government to the Joint Committee’s report on this Bill will be forthcoming, given that on Monday we were told that it would be here for the proceedings today?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord’s question is “imminently”.

Returning to the correspondence with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I quote from that letter that bears my signature and which I trust that he will see in due course. He asked whether the Government agree that if, in compliance with Clause 5, a Minister decides not to comply with an interim measure, that would place the United Kingdom in breach of its international obligations. Clause 5 provides that it is for a Minister only to decide whether the United Kingdom will comply with an interim measure indicated by the European Court of Human Rights in proceedings relating to the intended removal of a person to the Republic of Rwanda under, or purportedly under, a provision of or made under the Immigration Acts. The Bill is in line with international law. The Government take their international obligations, including under the ECHR, very seriously, and there is nothing in the clause that requires the United Kingdom to breach its international obligations. In any event, it is not correct that a failure to comply with interim measures automatically involves a breach of international law. There are circumstances where non-compliance with an interim measure is not in breach of international law. There follows a list of further addressees whom I hope will receive the letter presently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I feel a bit of an impostor with this set of amendments, because I think your Lordships might find it a bit down to earth to deal with some facts. I have been very interested in my approach as a pupil barrister, trying to overcome and understand everything that was going on—I have done my best. I apologise to everyone because my Amendments 40 and 41 are trying to get some facts from the Government about how the Rwanda treaty will operate or not. In Committee the Minister failed to give us many of the various statistics, so I wonder whether we are now in a position where we can get some of the facts around this. The deliberations we have had have been so important for months during which, it seems to me, the Government have become obsessed with Rwanda. Clearly, with respect to various comments that have been made and the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, we will have to see, once the Commons has considered the Bill, what we may wish to consider again in your Lordships’ House.

I point out that in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, the Home Secretary wrote that he would consider amendments from your Lordships’ House, so I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, because they got a massive concession from the Home Secretary. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, pointed out, that is not really sufficient but it is a change from when the Home Secretary was making a blanket statement that under no circumstances would he consider anything that your Lordships were considering. At least we have gone from a blanket refusal to consider anything to a statement in the Daily Telegraph—I presume it was well sourced since it was a quote; that is not always the case but often is—that the Home Secretary would consider it.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that this is not about killing the Bill and, although we may disagree over the extent to which we push this, I think the constitutional proprieties of this place needs restating again. As much as we accept that, as His Majesty’s Opposition, we will not block the Bill, the constitutional quid pro quo is that the Government in the House of Commons, through their elected mandate, accept that we have a right to demand that they think again and revise legislation in view of what is said here. We are not just a talking shop or a Chamber that says what we think for the fun of it: we make serious points about serious legislation that impacts on millions of people in this country and hundreds of millions across the word. A Government should respect that and listen to what has been said, even if, in the end, they reject much of it.

Every Government I have ever been part of or known, whether Conservative, Labour or coalition, have always considered what the House of Lords has said. At times they have said that although we cannot agree with that particular amendment, we will come forward with one of our own that seeks to at least address some of the problems that the Opposition and others have brought forward. That is no doubt the frustration that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was articulating to me, and what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was doing in quite rightly challenging me. We are seeking to challenge the Government to respect the constitutional position of this House. They play with the constitution at their peril; without a written constitution, those unwritten rules and conventions are crucial. I am sorry to spend a couple of minutes repeating that argument from the Dispatch Box—I hope the Prime Minister and others will hear it—but it is of fundamental importance. Without that, people ask what the point is and say that maybe we should take things further than we should.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Before the noble Lord leaves that point, will he also underline, yet again, the importance, within our constitutional proprieties and parliamentary process, of the place of Select Committees? Neither the Constitution Committee nor the Joint Committee on Human Rights has had a response on this Bill. How on earth can we consider legislation to any serious degree if, when committees established by Parliament look in detail at legislation, the Government then rush the legislation through pell-mell without any consideration to what those committees have found?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, makes the point for himself, and I absolutely support what he has just said.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said that no one else has put forward another idea. In fact, many of us have talked about finding safe and legal routes. This Government seem incredibly reluctant to do this. I do not understand why. This Bill is an absolute stinker. It is the worst of the worst. I have seen terrible Bills come through this House, but this is by far the worst. It is a shame on all of us that we have had to sit through hours and days of debate.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, has made a plea on behalf of Members in another place. Will they have available to them the Government’s response to the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights which I asked for in Committee, on Report and again today? The Minister will recall that, last week, he said it was imminent. I hope he will be able to tell us that it is now available in the Printed Paper Office and that it will be made available to honourable Members down the Corridor.

I have a great deal of respect for the Minister and like him enormously. All of us agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that there is an issue that has to be addressed. Some 114 million people are displaced in the world today. When will His Majesty’s Government bring together people from all sides of the House and the political divide to look at what can be done to tackle this problem at its root cause? Unless we do that, we can pass as many Bills as we like in this and in the other place but, frankly, in the end, it will make very little difference.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

When the House voted to delay ratification of the treaty, it did so on the basis that there was unfinished business and on the basis of a list of 10 requirements, most of which were for the Government of Rwanda, which should be fulfilled before Rwanda could be declared safe. Among these was the requirement in Article 10(3) of the treaty

“to agree an effective system for ensuring”

that refoulement does not take place. The risk of refoulement was, of course, central to the Supreme Court’s finding that it would be unsafe to deport refugees to Rwanda.

I have asked a couple of times in the Chamber during our 40 hours of debate how we are getting on with that requirement, which binds us, as well as the Government of Rwanda, to agree a system for ensuring that refoulement does not take place. Most recently, I asked on 4 March —Hansard col. 1379—whether Rwanda had agreed with us an effective system. The Minister replied that he did not know but would find out and get back to me. I am still waiting. Can he tell the House the answer now? If he cannot, will he undertake that the effective system will be up and running and reported to this House before the treaty is ratified and before any asylum seekers are deported to Rwanda?

I note that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, who does reply to questions, assured me in a letter dated 4 March that the Rwanda legislation required to implement the treaty

“will be operational prior to relocations beginning”.

I think this point is quite relevant to the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, about delay.