Asylum: UK-Rwanda Agreement

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, here we go again on Rwanda, with the treaty today and the Bill next week. Both are inextricably intertwined as the treaty is how Rwanda has been designated “safe”. I start by thanking my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith and his committee for a truly outstanding report, which has enabled us to have the discussion and debate we have had today. Should my noble and learned friend press both of his Motions to a vote, we will support him in the Lobbies.

I want to pick up the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. What we have seen today is not the House of Lords seeking to block, to act in an anti-democratic way or to do anything other than its job, which is to say to the Government, “You should think again and reflect on what you are doing”, where we believe that to be true. As a revising and advisory Chamber, that is absolutely what we should be doing; nobody, least of all the Prime Minister, should hold press conferences lecturing us about our role when all we seek to do is improve things and act in our proper constitutional role. The Prime Minister should remember that and be reminded of it.

What gives the strength to my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith’s report? In his usual understated way, my noble and learned friend started by saying that he was not standing here as a Labour Lord. He is quite right to make that point. He chairs an important committee of your Lordships’ House. The importance of what my noble and learned friend said is this: he stood here as the chair of a committee that has all-party support for the report that it has brought forward. It is not a Conservative, Labour, Cross-Bench or Liberal Democrat report; it is a report of your Lordships’ House, which believes that it set out what it was important for the Government to do.

That is what gives the report its strength and power—the fact that a unity of purpose, from all sides of this Chamber, has come together not to block the treaty, as one or two have suggested, but to ask the Government to delay it. At the heart of the Motion that my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith has brought before us, as the report says, is the necessity for us to ensure that the treaty meets the issues that were highlighted by the Supreme Court. Of course, we all agree with and welcome that, and the treaty needs to be examined in that way.

The report clearly asks how we will know that these conditions are being met. That is the fundamental part of the debate before us. Is Rwanda safe now? This is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, made. We can argue around it all we want, but the fundamental question is: do we have a country that is safe with which we are establishing this treaty? The report says that we cannot be sure; we do not know. Why do we not know? The Government have not provided the committee or this House the evidence to ensure that we make a judgment on whether that is right.

In the excellent remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, he put paragraph 45 of the report before us, which lists the 10 steps. The noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Kerr, and others mentioned this. Your Lordships should answer this: we are being asked to say that Rwanda is safe and this is what the report says we need to know.

A “new asylum law” is needed in Rwanda. Has anybody seen it? Does anybody have any idea what it is, as the treaty is dependent on it? Can the Minister explain

“a system for ensuring that non-refoulement does not take place”?

What is

“a process for submitting individual complaints to the Monitoring Committee”?

The committee has no idea; it is asking for this. The

“recruitment of a Monitoring Committee support team”

has not yet been done. Has

“the appointment of independent experts to advise the asylum First Instance and Appeals Bodies”

been done? What about

“the appointment of international judges”?

We do not know how many we want or are needed, for a start, let alone whether they have been recruited. We also need

“training for international judges in Rwandan law and practice”.

For each of these things, the Government have not provided evidence, to either the committee or your Lordships’ House, to support what the committee says needs to be done. How can we determine whether Rwanda is safe, when the very things on which that depends have not been provided to us? That is what the committee is saying. If we want to do that, we surely need to know whether those conditions have been met. The Minister needs to answer this.

The Government have been assured that all is well, but my question to them is: is assurance really enough when it comes to an international treaty? The Rwandan Government say all is well, but the committee says that

“assurances in themselves are not proof of Rwanda’s current ability to fulfil them”.

I could not agree more and the Government need to answer why they think assurances are proof when the committee is saying that they are not.

If everything is okay with respect to Rwanda, can the Minister explain, as a number of noble Lords have laid out, why six people from that country have been given asylum since the original MoU was signed in the summer of 2022? Is Rwanda a safe country when we have had to give its people asylum, even though it is a small number?

I know that we are sometimes supposed to say that our obligations under international law and treaties do not matter. I, for one, say, as do many across this Chamber, that what the UNHCR says is important. What the UNHCR thinks about the Rwanda treaty and the law that may follow it—but we are debating the Rwanda treaty—is a really important test of whether we have got this right. What does it say? The UNHCR finds the UK-Rwanda Agreement and the safety of Rwanda Bill to be

“not compatible with international refugee law”.

That is a troubling judgment, made on us by a significant body. People say it does not matter, but it does. I think it was the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Hannay, who talked about our global reputation. We are all proud of it, but things like this do not help. Across the world we are standing up for the role of international bodies and international law. What are we doing in Ukraine, the Middle East and other parts of the world if not standing up for international law and treaties? Yet, one of the most significant global bodies is questioning whether we have got this right.

I think it was my noble friend Baroness Hayter who mentioned that many times it is said, “Well, this is just your Lordships’ House”. It is worth remembering it was not only a committee of this House that pointed out that there should be a proper debate about the treaty. The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee said that there should be a debate and discussion. An all-party group said that such is the significance, importance and relevance of this to a Government policy that it should be discussed in Parliament. There is disquiet, upset and unease not just here but in the other place at the fact that the treaty may be ratified without the significant discussion that needs to take place.

My noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith has done a real service to your Lordships’ House in enabling us to have this discussion and at least ask the Government to think whether they have got this right, whether they want to ratify a treaty without the due consideration and proper process it deserves, and to answer the many real questions put to them today. It has enabled us not to block it, but simply to allow your Lordships to play your part by asking the Government to answer serious questions about the evidence they need to provide in their declaration that Rwanda is a safe country.

I hope that my noble and learned friend puts his second Motion to the vote, because we will support it and be proud to do so.