Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, since the Minister spoke about Motion E, I should like to respond to the government amendment. I am co-chair of the parliamentary group on modern slavery and a vice-chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation. The government amendment on modern slavery or human trafficking is entirely inadequate to deal with a group of people who are victims of a crime, suffering very often serious trauma, and without control of their destiny—they arrive here without the choice to be here. They are a specific and completely different group from any other group that your Lordships have been considering. They are then sent to Rwanda or to another country.

This Government, and I praised them at the time, passed a brilliant piece of legislation: the Modern Slavery Act, which is admired across the world. It has been made, if I may say so, almost entirely without any effect by subsequent legislation. For the Government to rely on the Modern Slavery Act as the legislation that is taken account of is laughable. The idea the Government make, that the Modern Slavery Act provides a protection for those victims who are covered by the existing legislation, is equally laughable. I did not table again the amendment that I put at the first ping-pong, but I must say that I deplore the Government’s approach to victims of a heinous crime that is widespread across this country.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion F1 and Amendment 10D in lieu. Your Lordships’ House will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to rehearse the moral case for this amendment in any detail. Frankly, if I have not persuaded the House of that on any of the previous occasions that I have spoken to a variant of this amendment, then I will not do so today. Instead, I shall focus briefly on yesterday’s proceedings in the other place and the reasoning of the Minister and others in refusing to accept it in its earlier version, Amendment 10C.

First, I must dispute any suggestion that mine, in any of its versions, is a wrecking amendment. Indeed, I argue that, far from being a wrecking amendment, it is calculated to improve this legislation in a very specific way and, in so doing, to protect our international reputation and our credibility as an ally in future conflicts while leaving the central policy entirely unchallenged—although I do not agree with the central policy or support it.

I take this opportunity to express my thanks to 13 senior military and security figures, many of whom are Members of your Lordships’ House, for their letter in support of Amendment 10C, which was published in the Sunday Telegraph last Sunday. As they said in this letter, without this amendment, the legislation we are considering will

“do grave damage to our ability to recruit local allies in future military operations”.

I will be grateful if, when he responds, the Minister explains why several noble and gallant Members of this House—former Chiefs of the Defence Staff and others with direct senior experience in national security issues—are wrong in that assessment and that his Government are right. If the Government simply feel that our future credibility as an ally is less important than other considerations, perhaps he could just say so openly.

Ours is a revising Chamber; this is what we are here to do. Given that we have already seen objective reality defined by governmental fiat in relation in Rwanda, I am less surprised than I otherwise might have been by the Government’s determination to construe Amendment 10C as in some way disruptive or hostile. It is neither. After all, as I have explained before, it affects only a small number of people who have given service to this country when we have asked it of them. This is a measured, limited and proportionate amendment, calculated to achieve justice for a relatively small number of people who have risked death and injury at our behest and in our interests.

As I have also explained before, in many cases it has been our own bureaucratic sclerosis, administrative shortcomings and wrongful refusal of the status that would have awarded visas to these very people, enabling them to escape certain death, that compelled these brave men to take irregular routes here in the first place. To then use the fact of their irregular arrival—the need for which is a consequence of our own failure—as a justification for their removal to Rwanda is not merely illogical but disgraceful and immoral.

The Government have offered two principal lines of argument in refusing to accept the principle of exempting this group from deportation. First, they have argued that the deterrent value of the Rwanda policy requires absolute consistency: there should be no statutory exemptions from deportation, however deserving. In response to Conservative Back-Bench voices outlining support for the principles underlying my amendment, the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration argued that it was unnecessary, given that the Home Secretary had discretionary powers under Section 4 of the Illegal Migration Act to exempt individuals in certain circumstances.

Justifying the refusal of my amendment by arguing simultaneously that clemency may hypothetically be exercised and that the deterrent effect must be adamantine is completely incoherent. The Government have had more than a year’s notice of this and of the identity of some of the people affected by the amendment. The Times, the Independent, Sky and Lighthouse Reports have all exposed the failures of our approach to the people affected. If the Government wished to offer certainty and comfort to these people, they have had ample time so to do. What faith can we possibly be expected to repose in the Government’s possible future gratitude to these brave men, given the way in which they have been treated to date? Of course, I welcome the relocations and assistance policy review, but why not simply accept the moral case, add this amendment to the Bill and relieve this and any future Home Secretary of the burden of exercising discretionary power by enshrining this exemption into law?

As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has claimed, the Government’s new amendment on modern slavery reporting is inadequate. It undermines their own contention that this Bill must be passed unamended to preserve its deterrent effect. In making this concession, they have also—albeit tacitly—conceded the value of the scrutiny of this House. I therefore propose both to test the opinion of this House once again and to ask the other place to consider whether it is really in our moral or national interest to expose those brave men who have served with us to further uncertainty. I continue to believe—as all the time I have been advancing this amendment I have believed—that it is now the time to give them the sanctuary their bravery has earned.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make one point in support of Motion F1. I yield to no one in my commitment to the democratic legitimacy of the House of Commons, but this House does have a constitutional role to play and this Bill is an example of it. We have a constitutional right and duty to make amendments to a Bill—even a bad Bill such as this Bill, which was in no manifesto—to try to improve it.

The noble Lord who just introduced his amendment referred to yesterday’s debate, from which I will read one sentence:

“My abiding concern remains for a class of people who served our country, who endured great danger in Afghanistan, who still find themselves in danger in a third country—namely Pakistan—and who may well fall foul of an entirely unintended consequence as a result of this legislation, however well intentioned it may be”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/4/24; col. 100.]


That was said by the distinguished Conservative Member Sir Robert Buckland. If we vote in support of Motion F1, we can give Members in the other place another opportunity to think again and accept this improving amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 10D in lieu—

10D: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause—
“Exemption for agents, allies and employees of the UK Overseas
(1) Notwithstanding the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the Illegal Migration Act 2023, any earlier Immigration Acts and the other provisions of this Act, the following categories of person may not be removed to the Republic of Rwanda—
(a) agents or allies who have supported His Majesty’s armed forces overseas in an exposed or meaningful manner that now affects their claim for protection;
(b) persons who have been employed by or indirectly contracted to provide services to the UK Government in an exposed or meaningful manner that now affects their claim for protection;
(c) the partners and dependent family members of persons referred to in paragraph (a) or (b) above;
(d) persons who were the partners or family members of persons referred to in paragraph (a) or (b) above in a manner that now affects their claim for protection.
(2) The exemption in subsection (1) above includes but is not limited to persons eligible for entry to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (“ARAP”) and Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (“ACRS”).
(3) A person seeking to rely upon the exemption in subsection (1) above shall give the Secretary of State notice as soon as reasonably practicable to allow prompt verification of available records as to allies, agents, employees, contractors and family members.
(4) Failure to give reasonable notice as required under subsection (3) above, may in the absence of available records verifying the claimant’s qualification for exemption under this section, allow a court or tribunal to draw adverse inferences as to the credibility of the claimant’s case for exemption.””

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

I beg to move Motion F1.