Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

These amendments or others like them—and there is a good menu of options in this group—give Parliament the tools that it needs to make a judgment that Rwanda is safe. They provide a mechanism for that judgment to be revisited without the need for primary legislation in the event that independent observers find that the situation on the ground has deteriorated. They provide for the Act to be sunsetted in circumstances where the treaty has been terminated. They do not cure the constitutional difficulties of the Bill but they enable the central decision to be made on the basis of evidence rather than dogma, fiction or fantasy. I hope that the Minister agrees that this would be a refreshing change.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 8 and associated Amendment 72 in my name. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and to the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Bristol and the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich for their support. I have also added my name to Amendment 64 tabled by my noble friend Lord Coaker.

I have tabled Amendment 8 for several reasons in relation to what happens to those who would find themselves translated to Rwanda should this Bill become law and should there be time for the Government to find the mechanisms and processes to make it work, which is in considerable doubt. Nothing that I say this evening should be taken as any endorsement whatever for any part of the Bill, because I do not believe that it will work or that it is acceptable in terms of our international conventions.

I take up the point made at the end of the last group by the Minister, when making a gallant effort to defend the Government, that this is about deterrents. The deterrent is Rwanda. The deterrent is the refusal, through the Nationality and Borders Act and then the Illegal Migration Act, to allow people to claim asylum when they reach our shores if they do not come with the appropriate accreditation and passport. As there are no current resettlement routes outside the particular routes for Ukraine and Hong Kong that are currently working, anyone outside those bespoke processes is denied asylum in the UK. The previous Home Secretary and her predecessor both made it very clear that what they were doing here was indicating that someone who came without those papers and processes was illegal. By being illegal they became, in the words of Suella Braverman, a criminal—they therefore broke our values and should not have the right to be processed here but instead should be transferred to Rwanda.

My amendment and the associated Amendment 72, which deals with the treaty requirements, are very simple. Someone who is offshored and can justify their asylum claim by showing that they are a genuine refugee should be allowed back into the country. That was true of the Australian scheme mentioned earlier, which incidentally was about picking people up in the 1,000 nautical miles of sea before people reached Australia and translating them back to the processing company.

The one thing the Australian scheme had in common with the Rwanda scheme is the cost: it ended up at £1 million per individual, which is what we will end up with here. They had that in common.

What the Rwanda scheme does not have in common with the proposition from, I repeat what I said a few weeks ago, the very far-right Prime Minister of Italy, the leader of Brothers of Italy—I do not know whether Members on the Benches opposite accept that she is a genuine right-winger—for offshoring to Albania is that those who are adjudged to be asylum claimants and shown to have refugee status will be transported back to Italy. They have the right to come back to the country that originally transported them out.

I want to make this clear, although at this time of night the message probably will not get across, but I do not believe that Members of the House of Commons understood what they were passing. I do not mean to be patronising, but I just think that they did not take account of the detail; neither did the public. I do not think they understood that it is a one-way ticket. We are not offshoring by any known concept of that process, but showing Rwanda, as I just described, to be a threat. If it is a threat, it is a threat. What is the threat about Rwanda? It is that it is Rwanda.

The Bill is a one-way ticket that, bizarrely, allows asylum to be claimed or not. In the responses at the end—and I gave notice of this at Second Reading—I would be interested in knowing what happens if someone who is not allowed to claim asylum in the UK, having been transported to Rwanda, chooses not to claim asylum in Rwanda. It cannot be presumed that, because they had tried to claim asylum in the UK and were criminalised when denied it, they would claim asylum in Rwanda. Perhaps we could park that and someone can give me an answer.

Let us say that they do claim asylum in Rwanda: they will end up no different from those who have not claimed asylum, because they will be in Rwanda. Sadly, those who have demonstrated their legitimate claim to asylum, and therefore are refugees by every international convention, will be in exactly the same position as those who are adjudged not to be refugees but who remain in asylum. The only two categories among those who can reach the UK from Rwanda are those who are claiming asylum in the United Kingdom as Rwandans, or those who cannot be transported from Rwanda to the country of their origin because it is unsafe and who are allowed back under the Bill. Those are the only two categories. Those who are not allowed back are those who have actually demonstrated their refugee status. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff; it is absurd.

If this is all about sending signals to the traffickers that their business model is broken, we would really be breaking the asylum seekers rather than the organised criminals. They would simply say to people, “If you are going to be transported to Rwanda, but you demonstrate your refugee status, you will remain in Rwanda, just as those who do not will remain in Rwanda”, the asylum seekers will disappear into the ether. Organised criminals are to be dealt with in subsequent groups in Committee. Genuine refugees will find themselves in the hands of organised criminals and part of modern slavery. We know that that will happen, because that is what organised traffickers will tell asylum seekers: “We will give you a telephone number. Ring it, and we’ll find you a job and a bed, and we’ll own you”.

If there is anything moral in how we stop people coming across the channel in dangerous small boats, it is not the morality of sending away the organised traffickers. It is the immorality of encouraging people to disappear into the hands of those same organised criminals.

I am suggesting that—as with Giorgia Meloni, and every other system in the world that has ever existed, as far as I know—those who demonstrate their refugee status, and have been transported from the country they finally reached, should be allowed to come back as refugees. It might not fit the threat of Rwanda that we talked about earlier, and will talk about in subsequent groups, but it would fit our commitment to our international obligations and the human rights of those individuals. If we do not do that, we are developing a concept of the United Kingdom as a country that will not only breach all international conventions that we have signed but our basic morality. That would be demonstrably dangerous for this country and other parts of the world in years to come.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, the full incoherence and madness of the Bill has just been exemplified in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. The many possibilities here are incredible, such as the idea that asylum seekers may well receive the advice that when they get to Rwanda they should not apply for asylum. What do the Rwandan people do then? We should ask ourselves that question: where do you send them back to? To Britain, whence they came—they are not applying for asylum here—or back to France, our great partner in trying to deal with the crime that is emanating across Europe, with which we need to be collaborative, and need intelligence and serious investigation into criminal gangs?

I was rather attracted by the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that we change the tense and make it about the future: that if Rwanda does become the safe country we are being asked to vote that it is, that we feel it has a legal system capable of making these assessments, and it is properly monitored, and we receive evidence—I have mentioned evidence before—we must be sure of that, and putting it into the future might be rather appealing. The one thing I had concerns about was when the noble and learned Lord said that this would not cause delay. I am hoping that there will be delay.

I do not want to see people being flown to a place in which this great project of modernising and improving the system will take place. If it is going to happen at all, I want it to have happened before we send anybody there. I happen to take the view, unpopular among many, that exporting people and sending them away is part of the problem. We are not doing as Italy’s ultra-radical, proto-fascist leader Ms Meloni is doing, which is asking the Albanians to do on Italy’s behalf what the Italian system would be doing. We are not asking for that; we are sending them there. We are exporting a problem.

I am concerned about the issue of delay and perhaps the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, will respond at some stage. I see him getting to his feet; maybe he can help me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for speaking in this group, and in particular the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his introduction.

The UK and Rwanda entered into the migration and economic development partnership with a commitment to develop new ways of managing flows of irregular migration by promoting durable solutions, and so breaking the existing incentives that make people embark on dangerous journeys to the UK. The UK and the Government of Rwanda have a shared vision regarding the necessity for the global community to enhance international protection for asylum seekers and refugees, underlining the importance of effective and operational systems that provide protection to those most in need.

This partnership is part of a suite of measures to tackle illegal migration and builds on wider collaboration with Rwanda on many shared issues. As I have set out previously, we have assurances from the Government of Rwanda that the implementation of all measures within the treaty will be expedited. The treaty itself will follow the usual process with regards to scrutiny and ratification. I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich that I am afraid I cannot improve on that, and I will continue to defer to the Home Secretary.

I would like to provide reassurance to noble Lords that the treaty enhances the role of the previously established independent monitoring committee, which will ensure that obligations under the treaty are adhered to in practice and will be able to take steps to address any concerns at an early stage. Therefore, the Government argue that the amendments in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, are not necessary, although I of course take his points about words. As the noble and learned Lord said, the Bill reflects the strength of the Government of Rwanda’s protections and commitments given in the treaty to people relocated to Rwanda in accordance with the treaty. It addresses the point made by the Supreme Court that Rwanda’s systems could be strengthened, on the basis of the facts before the Supreme Court at the time.

Amendment 14 in particular would impose a requirement for the joint committee for the migration and economic development partnership to provide a declaration to the Secretary of State confirming that the mechanisms specified in Article 2 of the treaty have been implemented. Without such a declaration, the effect of the amendment would be that the treaty could not be regarded as fully implemented. This is unnecessary. We have assurances from the Government of Rwanda that the implementation of all measures within the treaty will be expedited.

I turn to Amendments 15, 16, 77, 83 and 88 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and Amendments 64 and 65 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. The monitoring committee is independent of both the UK and Rwandan Governments. It was established under the memorandum of understanding that originally underpinned the partnership. The treaty enhances the monitoring committee’s role. Article 15 of the treaty provides that the UK and Rwanda must establish and maintain a monitoring committee for the duration of the term of the agreement. This means that both parties are obliged to ensure that the monitoring committee continues in operation for the life of the agreement, and this obligation is binding in international law.

The Government have already established robust reporting mechanisms. The monitoring committee’s terms of reference and enhanced monitoring plan are available publicly on GOV.UK. They set out that, during the period of enhanced monitoring, the monitoring committee will report to the joint committee, which is made up of both UK and Rwandan officials—as set out in Article 15(4)(b)—in accordance with an agreed action plan, which will include weekly and bi-weekly reporting as required.

It would be helpful to go into more detail on this. The treaty includes enhanced provisions to provide real-time independent scrutiny of Rwanda’s asylum procedures, aimed at preventing the risk of mistreatment contrary to Article 3 of the ECHR before it has the chance to occur. This addresses the findings in the Supreme Court proceedings that under the previous arrangements, as set out in the memorandum of understanding, the work of the monitoring committee would necessarily be retrospective.

In addition, the new provision of the monitoring committee’s own complaints system will allow relocated individuals and their legal adviser to make direct and confidential complaints regarding any alleged failure to comply with the obligations in the agreement. That enhanced phase will ensure that monitoring and reporting take place in real time, so that the monitoring committee can rapidly identify, address and respond to any shortcomings or failures to comply with the obligations in the agreement, identify areas for improvement, or urgently escalate issues prior to any shortcomings or breaches placing a relocated individual at risk of real harm. That will include reporting to the joint committee co-chairs within 24 hours in emergency or urgent situations.

As per Article 15(4)(c) of the treaty, the monitoring committee will make any recommendations to the joint committee that it sees fit. The monitoring committee will otherwise produce a formal written report for the joint committee on a quarterly basis over the first two years of the partnership, setting out its findings and making any recommendations. Following notification to the joint committee, the monitoring committee may publish reports on its findings as it sees fit. At least once a year, it will produce a summary report for publication. We consequently consider these arrangements, which have been carefully agreed with the Government of Rwanda and will be binding in international law, to be sufficient to ensure continued compliance with all the terms of the treaty.

Finally, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for his Amendments 8 and 72. Clause 1 sets out the obligations to which the Government of Rwanda have committed under the new treaty. The proposal in these amendments does not reflect the arrangements under the treaty. Requiring persons whose claims are successful in Rwanda to be returned to the UK would be against the spirit and intention of the treaty and the partnership. Those relocated to Rwanda are not intended to be returned to the UK, except in very limited circumstances.

It is the Government of Rwanda who will grant refugee status to those relocated to Rwanda through the treaty, which will underpin the migration and economic development partnership, not the UK Government. The grant of refugee status in Rwanda does not confer on that person any rights in the UK, as would be the case for any other person granted refugee status in Rwanda who had not been relocated from the UK. Anyone who wishes to come to the UK in future would have to apply through legal routes—through a work or family route. However, there would be no guarantee that they would be accepted.

As my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth noted, relocating asylum seekers to a safe third country to process their claim is compliant with the UK’s obligations under the refugee convention, as confirmed by the High Court and the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court did not disturb that finding.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Perhaps the Minister will answer two very simple questions. First, where else in the world have people been offshored but actually offloaded, as opposed to having the process completed and their refugee status acknowledged in the country they have reached? Secondly, what happens if people do not claim asylum in Rwanda?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Under the terms of the Bill, a person will be relocated if they have made a protection claim—that is, an asylum claim—in the UK. But, to be clear, we can also remove those who do not. On the other point, we have heard a very lively debate on other examples from around the world; I am afraid that I am not an expert on those examples, so I am not able to opine further.