Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Etherton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

I am obliged. So there we are.

[Lord Etherton (CB)]

I have a very short point to make. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, say that he was a great fan of the rule of law, but he, like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, seems to think that it is something that can be moulded in accordance with political desire in Parliament. We should be quite clear about this, and the point is not a difficult one.

The rule of law is made up of various ingredients. One of those ingredients is compliance with international obligations. If you do not like the obligations and wish to comply with the rule of law, you either secede from the convention or international obligation or you change it. So long as it is there, you have to comply with it if you want to say that you are a country that observes the rule of law. We are a leading world democracy. If we do not abide by the rule of law, we place ourselves in the company of numerous rogue nations. This country deserves better than that.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

I feel a little intimidated to follow such an intervention. I am not a lawyer either, but I am a member, as I have said repeatedly in the past, of the delegation from this Parliament to the Council of Europe; and I can attest, from conversations I have had in its migration committee, plenary sessions and other meetings in Strasbourg and other parts of Europe, that there are a number of countries in Europe at the moment that are looking to us to uphold standards that will give them the courage to maintain their current position with regard to these conventions. It is a very perilous moment. Our role in Europe is key to keeping quite a lot of others on board, and I want to emphasise that.

I feel it almost impossible for me to want to give even a shred of support to a Bill that, as has been quoted, has as its preface a statement by the Minister that he cannot give any guarantee, et cetera. I find myself at a loss to be looking at a piece of legislation—a law that will go on to our statute books—that begins this process with this degree of ambiguity written into it. Can lawyers not give the rest of us a starting point more certain than that?

Finally, let me say at this point that, long before I got involved in European matters, I had a lot to do with migration from Haiti to the United States, which is not a signatory to the convention. The methods open to countries that are not signatories to the convention are not pleasant at all, and I simply would not want the United Kingdom to have the opportunities to behave in that way.