Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord German Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment because it encapsulates the principle introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and me in amendments on Monday, which we subsequently withdrew and did not move. My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti referred to an article by Joanna Cherry in the Times. I want to quote from it, because on Monday we on this side of the House were assured by others on the opposite side that everything was well and rosy and good in the garden of Rwanda in relation to minorities, particularly LGBT minorities:

“Last week I led a delegation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. The committee will report on our visit … but in my personal opinion the UK government’s insistence that Rwanda is now a safe country for asylum seekers is a legal fiction … On LGBT rights, I think Rwanda is where Britain was 50 years ago … According to NGOs we met, LGBT people face stigmatisation and discrimination in what is quite a conservative society”.


That chimes absolutely with the evidence I presented to the House from NGO LGBT activists in Rwanda.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches agree that decision-makers and our domestic courts and tribunals are able to properly consider whether Rwanda is safe for an individual or a group of persons. This amendment would restore the proper jurisdiction of our courts and enable them to grant interim relief to claimants, preventing their removal to Rwanda until their cases had been properly considered. Where the considerations involve risk to life or inhuman or degrading treatment, it is critical that cases can be fully and properly considered before an individual is removed. We also support the ability of decision-makers to consider the risks to a group as well as to an individual, and refer, of course, to the matters raised on day 1 of Report.

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[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, as the House will know, I tend not to want lawyers to have it all their own way when they are dealing with legal issues, but I rise because it seems to me that this is an occasion to point to the fundamental problem the Bill presents. It asks Britain, which is absolutely dependent on international law, as we found in our debate yesterday, to present a situation which, at its very best, looks like flouting international law. The previous speech, by my fellow Ipswichian, is germane to this. I want to bring it back to this key issue. Those who objected to the European Union and our membership really cannot come to this House and say, “Because the French are doing it, we ought to copy them”. That seems to me to be a very curious position.

This brings us to a very crucial issue about this House. Earlier on, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, rightly said that the Government have addressed the world to say that whatever we say, they have no intention of changing the Bill. That is unacceptable. It is an insult to the House, and it is constitutionally improper.

However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, that the Opposition also have a responsibility in this. We all know that, so far, the Opposition are not prepared to pick one of these amendments, which are about our acceptance of international law, and to press it to the point at which the Government have to give way or lose the Bill. I say to the Opposition that the responsibility of opposition is as great as the responsibility of government. In the hands of the Opposition is the ability to make this Government turn the Bill into one that conforms with international law. If they do not do that, they will have failed in their duty and in the way they treat this House.

As the Opposition may become the Government, this, in my view, undermines their position, because the world knows why they do not want to do it: for electoral reasons. I find that unacceptable in the party I support; I find it just as unacceptable in the party with which I disagree.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, on that last remark, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. That is why, of course, we established our position clearly on Second Reading. We did it as a matter of principle and we stand by that principle. We will keep by that principle, and we will fight tooth and nail to ensure that the Bill, as bad as it really is, is put right.

I want to say how much I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I wish he would push this amendment to a vote, because we would certainly support it. I always like encouraging people to do things they are perhaps slightly resistant to doing. Essentially, this is a matter of great importance to us. We are part of this court. We helped to set it up, and the judges within it are British judges. We know very well that this is at the root of the issue. Yesterday, we were told that it is the backstop—

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—this is not the time to go back over the arguments we previously had. However, will the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, not accept that the one ground on which they cannot rely in support of their arguments is what Winston Churchill and the founding fathers of the convention said? They specifically considered whether the court should have the right to make an interim ruling, and they decided that it should not have that right.

[Lord German (LD)]

I deal with matters which are within my lifespan, I am afraid. It is certainly the case that the court—at present, the ECHR—operates on the basis of the decisions taken jointly by the range of countries within it. That is where we stand. We are being asked, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, just said, to give permission to the Government to flout the legislation of which we have been a part, and the court of which we have been a part in making it.

Let us look very briefly at our record. The United Kingdom has always complied with Rule 39 interim measures and has publicly declared the need for other states to comply with them. In 2023, the court received 61 requests to make an emergency intervention against the United Kingdom, only one of which was granted as a genuinely necessary intervention. In 2021, it was the United Kingdom that urged Moscow to comply with one of the court’s Rule 39 orders, demanding the release of the now deceased jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny—which was absolutely the right thing to do. Last year, another order helped to save the lives of two British fighters in Ukraine who had been taken captive by Russian forces. Those measures are important to us. We stand by them, and giving permission to the Government to ignore them runs counter to the principles under which we operate.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I too enjoyed the vintage, bravura performance from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, but let me move from the high constitutional principle to the practical implication of what he is suggesting in these two amendments. Will they do much good? Not really. Will they do much harm? Not really. They are almost certainly duplicative of other statistics being collected elsewhere.

Where amendments add to a Bill without achieving any value, that is a mistake. We want to keep our legislation—our Acts of Parliament—short, pointed and uncluttered. We do not want to put more baubles on the Christmas tree, and these are two particular baubles.

I say with respect to the noble Lord that he has forgotten about the real world. When this Bill becomes an Act, it will be watched like a hawk by every single Member of your Lordships’ House and the other place. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is not in her place, but she will be putting down a Parliamentary Question about it every day. The idea that, somehow, the Government will slide things through, and that we require these two amendments to make the Government honest is fanciful.

Everybody is going to be watching what happens. Is it going to work? Some Members of your Lordships’ House think it will not, and some think it will, but we do not need the Bill extended with more clauses when all the information that the noble Lord is seeking by these amendments will be available anyway, and certainly will be discovered by Parliamentary Questions, Statements, and all other methods of inquiry. I beg to move.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, if there is no other willing speaker, I say to the House that, set alongside breaching international obligations, outing the jurisdiction of the courts, breaching human rights, and being morally unsupportable, these amendments also show the Bill as unworkable and extremely costly to the taxpayer.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that if we need to know how many, what the consequence will be and how much it will cost, now is the time that we need to know. There is no point finding out after the Bill. It has been extremely difficult to get hold of accurate information on the costs, and I am grateful to the NAO, because it has at least given the published figures some context—but the numbers are tricky.

The trouble with the information we have, of course, is that the Illegal Migration Act itself has created a huge number of people—thousands—who are now in limbo and whose cases have been left because of the way that that Act was constructed. They are unable to have their asylum cases considered, unable to get on with their lives, and unable to work and use their skills and talents, and instead have to live in substandard conditions with no clarity on their fate.

As at December 2023, there are two sets of figures derived from the published figures: there are either 100,000 people awaiting an initial asylum decision, or 128,000 if you include dependants. Some 56% of those made their applications on or after 7 March 2023, when the Illegal Migration Bill was introduced to Parliament. A significant number of these claims will therefore have been deemed inadmissible under that Act, which means their applications are making no progress. Could the Minister tell us how many people are in that limbo at the moment? Given that we understand that the estimates for numbers that can be removed to Rwanda range from 100 to 150 to a couple of hundred, we need a proper policy explanation from the Government as to how they will deal with these asylum seekers. If you divide the number that is possible into the total number of people waiting, this could go on for years and years, and we will still have these people in the country. The Government cannot bury their heads in the sand. These are vulnerable individuals, and we have a responsibility to treat them well. It is just not acceptable to hold all these people in limbo.

On costs, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, because I have the figures that the National Audit Office has produced. In detail, there is money to be paid going on, and there is money already being paid, but the essential conclusion of the National Audit Office—I do not think it has a political interest in this, though it certainly has a financial interest—is that the cost will be between £1.9 million and £2 million per person. Add that to the list: we have people in limbo, extraordinary costs, and something in the Bill that is basically inhumane. I therefore support these amendments, because they take us some direction to finding out the real truth.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in his comments. The issues we should be concerned about are the ones that we have just been talking about. They are the real issues—the ones that really matter. We can all make party-political and cross-party references to the amount of money, and I must say that this is not the way I would spend £1.9 million on an individual. I am not known for total support for the Government on everything, but I do not think we really need to go into this. We know a great deal about it. The Government will not improve or lessen the effect of this Bill by telling us these figures. This is something I am perfectly prepared not to support, because I do not think it is important enough, and I do not want this House to be led astray from the key issues.

Throughout this debate, I have said that the thing I am interested in, because of my concern around climate change, is that I want us to clearly support international law. We have no hope of saving the planet, let alone anything else, unless we support international law. Therefore, if this is put to a vote, I shall support the Government, because this is an unnecessary addition, and I want the Government to concentrate on the key issue—that they are undermining our international reputation in a way that is unacceptable, damaging and dangerous. The fact that the Government are also spending a lot of money which does not look as if it will be useful is so much more minor than that, but I will support it.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo what my noble friend Lady Lister and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, have said, in supporting the approach that the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has taken on behalf of Northern Ireland. I do not necessarily agree with the suggestion that he is making to solve the problem, but it is clear that what he is saying—and what I believe the people of Northern Ireland are entitled to—is total openness about what is going to be achieved in relation to this. If the position is that the Government are saying with one voice that, actually, Northern Ireland will be treated exactly the same as the rest of the country, because the Windsor Framework relates only to trade, whereas in fact the position will be different, the Government should either come clean in relation to that or should propose amendments.

I echo also what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said, which is that, if the Government were to accept some of the amendments that have been made on Report, which in effect incorporate some degree of judicial control, the question of there being any inconsistency between the Northern Irish position and that of the rest of the United Kingdom would almost certainly go away. It may be that that solution is not welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, but it would nevertheless lead to a conclusion that there would be no difference in the position between Northern Ireland on the one hand and the rest of the United Kingdom on the other.

I also support my noble friend Lord Dubs when he raises the question of why the Channel Islands are not being treated with the usual constitutional respect with which they are normally treated. What is it about this Bill that makes the Government think that they can throw all constitutional convention to the wind?

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I will add some comments about the Jersey situation and the Channel Islands in general and amplify the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. First, there is a convention, which we talked about, which says that we do

“not legislate for the Islands without their consent in matters of taxation or other matters of purely domestic concern”.

More important is the Government’s guidance, which the Home Office is required to follow. The Government’s internal guidance—from the Ministry of Justice, originally —is that all UK departments

“must consult the Crown Dependencies at the earliest opportunity in the event that extension is under consideration and a PEC”—

the mechanism in the Bill here—

“should not be included in a Bill without the prior agreement of the Islands”.

Those are the rules that the Government have set for themselves, so we need to ask why they have not been followed. What is the rationale for not following their own internal rules and for breaching the convention, which is so important? As noble Lords have said, that will apply not just to Jersey, which may have been eagle- eyed and spotted it, but to all the Crown dependencies, including the Isle of Man.

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[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

I beg the noble Baroness’s pardon. I think that we had indicated that we were trying to get it by this point. That has not been possible, and I apologise to the noble Baroness.

I turn now to the matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Home Office officials meet the Justice and Home Affairs department officials of Jersey and officials from the Isle of Man and Guernsey on a regular basis. This engagement includes detailed updates on the Illegal Migration Act and this Bill. I note the points that noble Lords have raised with regard to consultation and confirm that the Government remain committed to consulting the Crown dependencies on legislation that might impact them. Unfortunately, due to the tight timeframes leading up to the introduction of the Bill, the Home Office was unable to engage in advance. However, as I have set out, I know that engagements have taken place since introduction.

Although it may seem unlikely, if, down the line, the United Kingdom-Rwanda treaty were to be extended to the Crown dependencies without the permissive extent clauses in this legislation—to which the noble Lord, Lord German, referred in his contribution—relocations from Jersey to Rwanda would not be able to take place, and it would be considerably harder to unpick this if the PEC is removed.

It is important to note that inclusion of a PEC in a Bill does not constitute legislating for the Crown dependencies, nor does it require any Crown dependency or the United Kingdom to do anything. Rather, it is a legislative tool that enables the United Kingdom’s provisions to be extended to the Crown dependencies when either a Crown dependency or, in extremis, the United Kingdom thinks necessary. There is no obligation to activate a PEC, but the enabling power remains in reserve.

[Lord German (LD)]

I thank the Minister for the reply—which was that “We were in such a hurry that we didn’t have time to follow our own rules”—but the question I asked him was what advice officials gave him, given that the requirement not to put a permissive extent clause in this Bill is in fact within the guidance issued to the Home Office, and this is the Government’s own internal rule for it. Somebody must have said something at this point. Can the Minister tell me why the officials’ decision was to override their internal rules?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

I regret to say that I am not privy to that information directly. I hear the point that the noble Lord raises, and, if he will permit, I will write to him to set out in appropriate detail an answer to the point that he makes.