Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

She will be deterred because the Bill is designed to send people to Rwanda, with a very narrow area of exemptions for those who cannot be sent to Rwanda. That is the way it will operate. Obviously, it will need to be spelled out, and the Government will have to put behind it all the explanations they can through modern social media et cetera to get across the message to the people who are at present in France that there is a real possibility that they will end up not in the UK but in Rwanda. That is how it works. That is how it is supposed to work, and I submit that widening it to all these other possibilities will detract from that deterrent element and therefore destroy the purpose of the Bill, with the domestic consequences that we can see.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, it is extremely difficult to debate anything in the Bill if the only answer of those who are happy with it is, “It is all very difficult, and therefore we have just got to do it as we are saying, because we really cannot deal with any of the details”. I have to say to my noble friend that the fact that we are talking about people who come to this country not illegally but involuntarily means that we are not talking about people who are going to be deterred by anything. They do not want to come here, so the question is how we deal with those.

I must say I am a bit tired of having to remind this Government of what it means to be a Conservative. I had to do it earlier, on the single market, and I am now doing it on this. We have a reputation in the world because of our Modern Slavery Act. It was a brave and important thing to do. It was welcomed across the whole House. I am proud that it was a Conservative Government who did it. I am not proud that there is a Conservative Government undermining that, when we know that more than three-quarters of those who appeal in these circumstances are found to be right in their appeal.

We also know that appeal is very difficult. We know how many people who are trafficked do not get into the system because of the nature of trafficking. Those of us who sit in our comfortable places might just think, on Ash Wednesday, that this is a moment to reach out to those who are uncomfortable and not able to speak up for themselves. There are few people who are in a worse position than those, so on what possible moral basis do you threaten to send them to a country which has not signed up to the international agreement on modern slavery, has twice as many modern slaves as we do—and we admit that we have many whom we have not traced—and has a history of ignoring this problem? How on earth can we defend that on a moral basis, leave alone a practical one? What the blazes is the use of claiming that there is a deterrent effect when the person you are talking about is not in a position to be deterred because they have been taken up by someone who has made those decisions for them?

I believe we cannot allow the Bill to go through without some serious consideration of this point and make sure that we do not allow our country to be let down in this way.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 75 in this group, which is in my name and supported by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Coussins and Lady Smith of Newnham. The noble Baronesses have asked me to tender their apologies as they are unable to attend today’s Committee. I confidently expect that they may get an opportunity in later stages of the Bill to explain to your Lordships’ House their reasons for supporting this amendment.

Before I turn to Amendment 75, I wish to make clear my support for the other amendments in this group, those in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I commend them both for tabling these amendments and for the powerful clarity with which they were moved. I am strongly in favour of excluding unaccompanied children, victims of modern slavery and the victims of human trafficking—in fact, I am in favour of excluding those who have no option about where they are from deportation to Rwanda.

These debates are fundamental, even leaving aside the morality of offshoring—or, perhaps more accurately, offloading—a question which has received sufficient attention in your Lordships’ House to require no further explication from me. These decisions on exemption speak to the values we project around the world. Given the political capital that has been invested in the Rwanda scheme, its realisation, were that to occur, will attract a correspondingly large amount of international scrutiny. It is difficult to imagine the global derision and horror that would result from pictures of children and victims of slavery and trafficking being bundled on to flights for forcible removal from the UK, a place in which these vulnerable people have sought sanctuary, to any other country, never mind to one which is not, as we hear, in a condition to look after them and to protect them from the vulnerabilities that caused them to seek sanctuary here in the first place.

I turn to Amendment 75. As the explanatory statement makes clear, the new clause proposed would exempt people who are a very special case—those who have put themselves in harm’s way in support of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, or through working with or for the UK Government overseas—from removal to Rwanda, as well as exempting their partners and dependent family from such removal. Again, I ask your Lordships’ House to consider what message would be sent by the spectacle of someone who has faced peril in service of the UK receiving the reward of forcible removal from the very country for which they risked their life?

Last Monday, 5 February, in the debate on a UQ on the relocation of Afghan special forces, I welcomed—and I repeat that welcome today—the Government’s undertaking to review all the ARAP applications from members of the Afghan special forces, known as the Triples, that have already been deemed ineligible. Some of these very brave men and their families and dependants are hiding in Afghanistan, and others are in Pakistan fearing deportation, and awaiting whether the new Government in Pakistan have the same policy as the previous Government to deport them back to Afghanistan, where they would be in danger of their lives.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I will go into the detail that I have on what happens when someone arrives illegally and claims to be a victim of modern slavery, both under the Illegal Migration Act and pre-IMA. First responders will be expected to refer individuals into the national referral mechanism where there are indicators of modern slavery, whether IMA or pre-IMA.

Under the IMA, when somebody has arrived in the UK illegally and is therefore subject to the Section 2 duty to make removal arrangements, and has received a positive modern slavery reasonable grounds decision from the competent authorities in the NRM, they will be disqualified from the protections that typically flow from a positive RG decision unless the exceptions in Section 22 of the IMA apply.

Under pre-IMA, when someone has arrived in the UK illegally and they have received a positive modern slavery reasonable grounds decision in the NRM, they are eligible for the protections and support of the recovery period. However, if a public order disqualification, as set out in Section 63 of NABA, is made for an individual, that eligibility for support will not apply and they may be eligible for removal.

The other point is that, as I have said before from the Dispatch Box, the treaty specifically provides that we share information with Rwanda and that extra measures will be provided with regards to the specific vulnerabilities of the types that we are discussing. I hope that goes some way to clarify the picture. I appreciate that it is quite complex to keep up with, and I will write a letter.

Amendments 23 and 47 overlap with later amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord German, will be content if I deal with the substance of that amendment when we reach that debate. In summary, Article 3 of the UK-Rwanda treaty makes specific reference to unaccompanied children not being included in the treaty and that the UK Government will not seek to relocate unaccompanied children under the age of 18 to Rwanda.

Amendment 85 looks to put a block on commencement and seeks to ensure that there are detailed assessments of the impact of the Bill on victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. The independent monitoring committee, established on 2 September 2022 under the terms of the initial MoU, has subsequently been enhanced by the treaty between the UK and Rwanda to ensure that the obligations under the treaty are adhered to in practice. The treaty already makes clear that the agreed monitoring mechanisms must be in place by the time the partnership is operationalised.

As noble Lords also know, the new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner started her role on 11 December 2023. The Government will work collaboratively with the commissioner to ensure that modern slavery is effectively tackled in the UK, and will work with international partners to promote best practice.

As set out in the earlier debate, the Government’s assessment in the published policy statement, drawing on wider evidence documents, is that Rwanda is a safe country with respect for the rule of law. The treaty that the UK has agreed with Rwanda makes express provision for the treatment of relocated individuals, demonstrating the commitment of both parties to upholding fundamental human rights and freedoms without discrimination and in line with both our domestic and our international obligations.

Rwanda is a country that cares deeply about refugees, and I thank my noble friend Lord Bellingham for his perspective on this. That is demonstrated by its work with the UNHCR to temporarily accommodate some of the most vulnerable populations who have faced trauma, detention and violence. We are confident that those relocated under our partnership would be safe, as per the assurances negotiated in our legally binding treaty.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Clause 7(2) of the Bill says:

“In this Act, references to a person do not include a person who is a national of the Republic of Rwanda or who has obtained a passport or other document of identity in the Republic of Rwanda”.


All relocated individuals, including potential and confirmed victims of modern slavery, will receive appropriate protections and assistance according to their needs, including referral to specialist services, as appropriate, to protect their welfare.

Morality was mentioned by a number of speakers. I would like to put on the record a slightly different perspective on morality. I think it is immoral not to try to stop vulnerable people being exposed to dangerous and involuntary channel crossings. It is immoral to facilitate the activity of criminal gangs, most of whom, by definition, are also human traffickers. It is our moral imperative to stop these modern-day slavers and smash these criminal gangs that are exploiting people and putting others’ lives at risk. If any victims are identified, as I have repeatedly said, there are safeguards within the treaty to make provision for their vulnerabilities.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

On that point, those of us who raised the question about morality agree with all the Minister said about it but, at this moment, we are clearly uncertain about whether people who have been trafficked are able to get support in this country, from a system that was laid down by a Conservative Prime Minister, before there is any question of them being exported to Rwanda. If the Minister can show that to us in the letter, which I hope he copies to me and to others, we will be prepared to accept that we are being moral, at least in that category. At the moment, it looks to us as if we are not dealing with the issue of people who could not be deterred from coming here because they are being brought here compulsorily.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that and will of course make sure that he is copied in to the letter. I heard very clearly what he said, and I speak on behalf of my noble and learned friend. Clearly, we would not wish to argue for a lack of morality in the safeguards that we are putting in place for vulnerable people.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, every time in this Committee you think that the Government cannot be more flattened than they were in the previous debate, they are even more flattened. I refer to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who in my respectful submission completely flattened the Government’s case for not allowing the courts in.

I support what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is proposing. As the Committee understands, it means that if somebody challenges whether Rwanda is a safe country in general, the courts must decide on it. The Government are obviously under no illusions about what such a clause would mean. It would not mean that an asylum seeker, every time they were in trouble and might be about to be expelled, could raise the question generally of whether Rwanda is a safe country; it would mean in practice that, eventually, one case in a high Court of Appeal would definitively decide whether at that time Rwanda was a safe country in general or not.

The practical consequence of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is that the courts will determine once—and maybe again in a few years’ time if the position has changed—whether it is a safe country in general, and everyone else will be bound by that. The Government accept that, if the issue is whether an individual’s circumstances put him or her at risk, they have the right to challenge in court anyway. By refusing to allow this to happen, they are cutting out a one-off shot by the courts to determine whether Rwanda is a safe country in general.

Why on earth would they not want that to happen, as their case is not that Rwanda might or might not be a safe country but that it is a safe country? Might I venture to suggest a reason why they are behaving in this extraordinary way? It is because it will take a bit of time for the courts to reach that conclusion—maybe two or three months from the Bill becoming law—and in that time there might be a general election and nobody will have flown to Rwanda. Could a responsible Government be willing to put asylum seekers’ lives at risk on the chance that Rwanda might not be a safe country? Obviously not, without a proper examination by the courts.

What I am saying does not challenge the basic policy of deporting to a third safe country or offshore processing—that debate is for another day—but, if the Government are going to do this, to give people confidence in them and to give the world confidence in the UK, surely they should do it lawfully, not unlawfully. They should not be advancing bogus reasons for cutting out the courts, when the courts are there in every other consideration of whether a country is safe. It is very discreditable.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I hope the Committee accepts that I rarely intervene when the lawyers are at it, because I am not of great assistance, particularly to my noble friend of a great many years Lord Clarke. But he asked the Government to tell him of an occasion when this has happened before. I will remind him of one: the court of King Canute told him that, because he was sovereign, he could tell the waters to stop and the tide to go out. Of course, we were never taught it this way round in school, but the truth is that King Canute went to prove to his courtiers that he could not reverse the truth.

The problem with this part of the Bill is that it proposes that the sovereignty of Parliament is able to make a situation true, whether it is or not. In other words, this would be wrong even if the Supreme Court had not ruled that this is not a safe country. It is not part of the sovereignty of Parliament to declare truth; it is part of the sovereignty of Parliament to declare the law—and, in so far as we are sensible, we try to make the law as close to the truth as possible.

Now this Government have done a remarkable thing. There are many bishops on the Bench at the moment, so I will speak with a certain amount of care, but I seem to remember:

“‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer”.


This Government have not even asked the first question. They assert that this is true and, as my noble friend suggested, not only is it true but it will always be true until, I suppose, the Government—because the courts will have no place in this—say that it is not true.

The reason I feel so strongly about this is that I have spent nearly 11 years of my life as chairman of the Climate Change Committee. One of the problems I have faced all that time is people asserting “my truth” —not “the” truth but “my” truth—and that their truth is the equal of anyone else’s truth. That is not the nature of truth. Truth has constantly to be questioned. Doubt is an essential part of faith; you have constantly to question. The Government are proposing a unique situation, which is that we shall never question their decision, at this moment, that Rwanda is a safe place. I am not going to try to say whether I think it is safe or not. I think merely that it should be under constant consideration if we are going to take other human beings out of our jurisdiction and place them somewhere else.

That, if I may say so to my noble friend, is a moral matter. We remove responsibility by doing this, and the one way in which we can protect ourselves is if the place to which we send them is constantly available for questioning. The only place where that questioning can take place is in a court because courts listen to all the arguments, hear all the evidence and make a decision. If you do not like the decision, you can appeal it, but finally you have to accept it. Once you undermine that, I do not see how you can uphold the rule of law anywhere else. Once the Government have said that their truth is true and there is no other truth, we have moved into a position which is entirely unacceptable in a democracy. This Government have to understand that—on this issue perhaps alone—this House will have to stop this Government’s proposal by whatever way. This is our duty. We are not a House which just puts the details of law into some sense. We also have a constitutional position. The Prime Minister made his rather curious statement about the will of the people, but the will of the people can be protected only if this House stands up for the constitution of our nation, and our constitutional position must be that the Government cannot determine truth. Only the courts can do that.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I endorse the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I want to question slightly the use of truth because there is a difference between truth and factuality. Something can be not factual, but it can be true. Let us look at a parable, for example. We have not even got as far as factuality when we are talking about truth. To put it very simply—I am in terrible danger of evoking Immanuel Kant here, but I will try to avoid that—if I say I am a banana, it does not make me a banana. There has to be some credible questioning of that. I am not a banana. A country does not become safe because someone says it is, even if a Government say that. That has to be demonstrated, and it has to be open to question, particularly, as has been said many times, because the word “is”—we are getting very Clintonesque in his impeachment hearings when we get into the meaning of “is”—has a permanence about it that does not allow for the possibility of change. I fail to see rationally how this is such a problem for the Government, other than that there is an ideological drive in this which is not open to argument.

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[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, the policy of the Bill is to respond to the United Kingdom Supreme Court’s decision in the form of this treaty and the Bill which accompanies it. This does not, Canute-like, revise or reverse the truth. As I say, it is a response to the findings of the Supreme Court—findings made, as they were, in relation to a period of time which dates from the High Court’s consideration of the matter.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

These were findings that related to a period of time. The Government are saying that that period of time has moved on and therefore they make other findings. But they are also saying that no one may make any other findings, even if that moves on. In other words, the Government are saying that there is only one moment in which we can make this judgment. We have not got there yet—the Government have said we have not got there—but there is one moment, and once the judgment is made, although I do not know what the opposite of “retrospectively” is, it cannot then be changed, even if the facts change and even if the courts want to change it on the evidence. Will he please tell me whenever or wherever, in what Bill, that has ever been put before this or any other House?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, the point of the principle of the Bill is to remove the matter from the consideration of the civil courts and to place it before the court of Parliament; to take the matter from the civil courts and place it in the international and diplomatic sphere.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I rise with great humbleness to intervene at this point. I was planning to refer to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I know that she has a book coming out shortly, Human Rights: The Case for the Defence. After listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, I feel that possibly one of the two noble Baronesses should write a book “Courts and the Law: The Case for the Defence” because it seems to have been clearly identified that that is something we need. The point I want to make about the title of the noble Baroness’s book—she has kindly given me a copy, and I have not had time to read it yet, but I will —is how tragic it is that we feel as if we have to make a case for the defence of human rights. That is the place we are in now. That explains why I chose to attach my name to the notice of our intention to oppose the Clause 3 standing part of the Bill, as did the noble Lord, Lord German, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

I think it is worth going back to the title of this clause:

“Disapplication of the Human Rights Act 1998”.


I fully understand that other amendments in this group are trying to make this less bad, but, following what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, I feel that crying out in opposition to any disapplication of human rights is where I have to be. It is the only place that I feel that I can be. This picks up points made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford that human rights have to be universal. I was looking at one of the main United Nations websites, which defines human rights as

“rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status”.

If we take human rights away from some people, it does not affect just those people; it makes all of us far poorer and far more vulnerable.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remember as a young boy walking with my father in a town. We passed a building which had “Constitutional Club” written on it. I said to him, “What does that mean?”, and he said, “It is the Conservative club. It is called a constitutional club because the Conservative Party believes that the constitution is very important to maintain the stability of the nation”. I rise to support my noble friend in his comments about this Bill in general and the particular clause which we are discussing now.