Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Viscount Hailsham

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I support Motion B1, moved by the noble and learned Lord. I support both proposed new subsections within his amendment, subsections (7) and (8), but I want to focus exclusively on subsection (8), because it addresses directly what will happen in the foreseeable circumstances that Rwanda ceases to be safe. It lives in a fragile and volatile part of the world. It does not have a long tradition of democracy. The president has been there for an awfully long time. I do not regard that as a good sign. Therefore, there is a foreseeable risk that Rwanda will cease to be safe. As the noble and learned Lord said, this Bill not only does not address that point but requires future decision-makers to assume that it is safe when the rest of the world knows that it is unsafe. That is a nonsense. It is unjust and it is bad government. I am glad to say that there were distinguished voices on the Conservative Benches yesterday and when the matter was last debated, cited by the noble and learned Lord, who made these points.

I recall also the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, when the matter was debated in this House a few weeks ago. He told your Lordships that on that very morning he had heard the Lord Chancellor, Mr Chalk, say that in the event of the monitoring committee holding that Rwanda was no longer safe, there would be a parliamentary occasion. He did not specify whether the occasion would be a social one to which we would or would not be invited, nor did he tell us about the parliamentary process. I asked my noble friend the Minister whether he would be good enough to tell us what the parliamentary occasion would be. He said that he could not tell us. Well, he has now had four weeks to find out.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I apologise for intervening, but I have not heard, either, from the Lord Chancellor as to what the parliamentary occasion would be. Can the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, help us? Has he heard what the parliamentary occasion would be?

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

No. I have been speculating on whether we will be asked to a party, to which we might or might not be invited, or whether there will be a parliamentary Statement or whether the Government will bring forward a Bill to repeal this Bill. There are a number of possibilities, but we have not been told and, so far as I am aware, the Minister has not been told either—though he could go and take advice from the Box, if he so chose, because he has officials in this Chamber who could doubtless advise him.

So we have a real problem, and it is addressed by the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord. The amendment has advantages, in that it does not deny parliamentary sovereignty and it retains the accountability of the Secretary of State, but it has one disadvantage in that it is silent as to what happens if the Secretary of State makes a statement to the effect that Rwanda is not a safe country. I am not quite sure what happens in legal terms at that point, but I am certain that it is an important step forward. We would be making progress if we accepted this amendment, and if the noble and learned Lord tests the opinion of the House, I shall be supporting him.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Viscount Hailsham

Report stage
Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I will make just a one-minute contribution to this debate on Amendment 45. This is the rolling sunset to which I have previously referred. It is a natural phenomenon not previously identified by meteorologists, but the purpose is, as the noble Baroness has said, to ensure that the Secretary of State is accountable. He or she has to come to Parliament to trigger the commencement, and the rolling sunset provides for assessment every two years, in effect. That seems to me highly desirable, and in that spirit of desirability I support this amendment.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I am very interested in this amendment. It gets rid of the current commencement provision, Clause 9(1), that says:

“This Act comes into force on the day on which the Rwanda Treaty enters into force”.


Article 24 of the agreement says:

“This Agreement shall enter into force on the date of receipt of the last notification by the Parties”—


that is, the parties to the agreement—

“that their internal procedures for entry into force have been completed”.

There is a statement that the only thing needed in order for the Bill to come into force is the bringing forward of this new legislation, the Bill we are debating now. I assume, on the basis of what the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, said when he visited the Rwandan Parliament, that the Rwandan Government have now done all that is necessary to ratify the agreement.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Viscount Hailsham

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness and entirely agree with what she has said on Amendment 81. My amendment is an additional concept. The concern has become apparent in Committee that, if Rwanda can become safe, it may also cease to be safe. It is important that we should have in place a mechanism for determining if it becomes unsafe, so that the provisions in the Bill cease to operate. That is what my Amendment 82 seeks to do.

I have called it rolling sunsets, but this is what I have in mind: the amendment from the noble Baroness triggers the implementation of the Bill for a period of two years, in the circumstances that she set out, and at the expiration of that period, if the Government want another two years or any other period, they must get an affirmative resolution of both Houses. Before they can get that, the procedure outlined by the noble Baroness must be complied with, including a report from the Joint Committee as to safety. If they want to roll it on for a third period of two years and so on, each time Parliament would be given the opportunity of receiving a report and triggering the extension of the Bill. In that way, rolling assessments of safety could be provided.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti’s amendment, as amended by that of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. It is incredibly important that the Act comes into force only when there is satisfaction that Rwanda has become a safe country and a rolling assessment can be made. I say that subject to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, indicating to us earlier—we were very excited by this—that he would tell us whether Parliament could in some way reopen whether its judgment on whether it was a safe country had changed. He told us that the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, would tell us how this would work on a later amendment. I anticipate that he will tell us on this very amendment how Parliament can in some way be activated to get rid of it. I am very excited to hear that, because at the moment I cannot see how it could without the amendments of my noble friend and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham.

I will raise two points about where we are at the moment. The first is about when the future Act will come into force. Clause 9 says:

“This Act comes into force on the day on which the Rwanda Treaty enters into force”.


One would envisage that the treaty will not enter into force until the Government are satisfied that Rwanda is safe. That is a minimum requirement for a Minister. I assumed that that was the position, but I then had the misfortune to look at the agreement that the country has entered into with Rwanda. It says:

“This Agreement shall enter into force on the date of receipt of the last notification by the Parties”—


Rwanda and the United Kingdom—

“that their internal procedures for entry into force have been completed”.

I understand that to mean that, when the process has been gone through constitutionally in Rwanda and the UK—to ratify, as it were—each country notifies the other that that is the position, and the agreement immediately comes into force.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Viscount Hailsham

Committee stage
Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I commend to my noble friend the concept of the rolling sunset, which he will find in Amendments 81 and 82.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I am very interested in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German. On one view, it is saying that the Secretary of State makes his or her decision only after properly considering all the relevant factors. It may be that what he has in mind is that, thereafter, there can be appropriate review of that by the courts. I assume that he has in mind judicial review. Therefore, it would be the decision of the Secretary of State that was judicially reviewable. It is worth thinking about whether, once that decision had been made and then upheld by the courts because there was a proper basis on which a Secretary of State could reach that decision, in general terms the question of whether the country was safe would not thereafter be open to consideration by the immigration office.

I would not be in favour of that as a matter of principle, but if one is looking for a compromise—this is something that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, touched upon, and it may be dealt with in later amendments—I would be very interested to hear what the view of the Government is in relation to a situation where, in effect, the Secretary of State had to make a proper decision addressing the proper considerations and that decision was then open to judicial review. Could that be a compromise?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Viscount Hailsham

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I have a feeling I am going to be in a minority in this Committee. As much as I like and admire the noble and learned Lord who has just spoken, I disagree with at least two of his amendments. I disagree with Amendment 195 on the minimum sentence for rape, partly because of the general point that I have made about judicial discretion already, which I am not going to repeat, and partly because—I draw now on my own experience as a criminal barrister; perhaps not a very distinguished one, but I was a genuine lawyer for quite a long time —rape is a broad spectrum of offence, from ones which one can comprehend to the truly awful. There is a spectrum here, and it is wrong to fetter the judicial discretion to the point envisaged by this amendment.

The other amendment I do not agree with would make the murder cases of the class described by the noble and learned Lord in Amendment 197 a whole life offence. I personally shrink from whole life sentences if they are mandatory. There are many cases where they are proper, but I would leave it to the judge. I very much dislike the concept of sending lots of people to mandatory whole life sentences with no prospect of rehabilitation.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

The noble Viscount may be assuaged by the fact that what I am talking about is the starting point. Therefore, it is not a mandatory whole life term, it is a mandatory life sentence, and it is for the judge to indicate what the position is. The effect of my amendment is to say that the starting point is a whole life term.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

We have been here before in previous debates. The effect is to make it mandatory unless there are some very powerful arguments against. If the noble and learned Lord will forgive me, having read his Amendment 197, I recognise that in many cases falling within that classification a whole life sentence would be appropriate: abduction, yes, murder, of course, but sexual assault? One needs to keep in mind that is a fairly broad offence from the relatively trivial to the very serious. I am not at all happy about including that as a triggering element which makes the whole life sentence the starting point. But I know I am in the minority on this point and the Committee will doubtless take a different view.