Rwanda: Asylum Arrangements Treaty

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend asked me a very similar question yesterday and I will give a very similar answer, which is that I am unable to predict what is likely to be in the legislation that is yet to be presented to Parliament.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that, if a committee of this House—the International Agreements Committee or indeed the relevant committee in the other place—under CRaG, were to make a report for debate, the Government would not proceed to ratification of the treaty unless and until that debate had taken place?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Again, the noble Lord is asking me to speculate on something that has not yet happened, and I am afraid I do not see the point of that.

Rwanda: Memorandum of Understanding

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on securing this debate and, indeed, on her persistence in doing so. I think the committee, of which I was then a member, was absolutely right to conduct an inquiry and to challenge, as we did, the Government’s decision to use a memorandum of understanding as the basis for this arrangement with Rwanda. By deliberately making the arrangement—of course it is not an agreement, according to the Government—not binding in international law, the Government deliberately put it outside the scrutiny of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. So there is a very simple principle at stake in this debate: should significant international agreements be scrutinised by Parliament?

This agreement is in fact both significant and controversial. The cost is high. The risk of non-delivery is also high. There was insufficient evidence of potential effectiveness, such that the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office at the time had to seek a ministerial direction on value-for-money grounds before proceeding. The High Court has determined that domestic legislation gives the Government the necessary powers, but this does not preclude the possibility that removals to Rwanda of some individuals may conflict with the provisions of the refugee convention. This and the lack of any enforcement powers in the arrangement further strengthen the case for scrutiny.

The Government should recognise that their use of the prerogative power subsists by virtue of the Government’s control of Parliament. The sovereignty they enjoy is that of the sovereign in Parliament. When they fail to recognise this, or abuse the privilege, they hasten the day when we will need to legislate to specify when and how the Government can enter into such agreements and in what circumstances Parliament must assent. I think that in this case the Government got the procedure wrong. I hope that today the Government, whether or not they persist in the policy, will accept that they got it wrong and undertake not to repeat that error.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for those two questions. On the first point, no, to amend a treaty would be a more cumbersome process than the flexibility afforded by a memorandum of understanding. On the second point, it is clear that Parliament had considerable opportunities for scrutiny, as I have set out, and there was no want of scrutiny from the method adopted.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Can I press my noble friend on one point? Does he agree that the Government could have chosen to lay a memorandum of understanding under CRaG even if not required to do so, and that, as a result, it could have been debated in the House of Commons, which would have had a choice on whether to support the agreement or otherwise?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I appreciate the hypothetical question that my noble friend asks. As I say, the issue was one for the Statements that were provided to the House of Commons, and it seems that there was no want of scrutiny. Therefore, I am afraid that I do not accept that contention.

Asylum Seekers: Removal to Rwanda

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

We have been very clear that each case will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. No one will be sent anywhere where they might be persecuted or where their human rights might be undermined.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Will my noble friend commit the Government to providing substantive evidence to the inquiry launched by the International Agreements Committee, of which I am a member, and in doing so, will the Government explain on what basis they chose not to lay this agreement before Parliament? The Ponsonby rule suggests that any such agreement of significant public importance should be laid before Parliament.

UK-Rwanda Asylum Partnership Arrangement

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that anyone would accuse me of trying to stifle debate or of not trying to answer noble Lords’ questions. I do try to answer them and, if I cannot, I will get back to them. As I said earlier, we are abiding by our international obligations. The EU and the UNHCR work with Rwanda to relocate refugees there.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, further to the question of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, I do not think that my noble friend has responded to that point. A memorandum of understanding can be defined as a treaty under CRaG if it is a written agreement between states and it is binding in international law. Why does the Minister not say that the Government will lay this memorandum of understanding before Parliament under CRaG?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I think I said to the noble Earl that I would clarify the point.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the National Housing Federation. I will not repeat what I said in Committee on this issue. Suffice it to say that migrant women are particularly vulnerable in an abusive situation because their insecure immigration status can be used as a tool against them. They often cannot access refuges or other safe accommodation because they have no recourse to public funds.

Women’s Aid, whose excellent briefing I acknowledge, considers that the Government may be in breach of several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and in breach of the Istanbul convention obligations because they have failed to ensure that survivors with insecure immigration status can access equal support for and protection from domestic abuse. Assurances by the Minister in Committee that

“the Secretary of State is taking steps to ensure effective protection and support for all victims of domestic abuse”—[Official Report, 8/2/21; col. 99.]

have not convinced anybody. Amendment 70 provides a way through by regularising survivors’ immigration status irrespective of whether or not they are on a spousal visa, and by extending the destitute domestic violence concession from three months to six months to underpin that.

In Committee, the Minister was reluctant to extend the rules in this way because it would undermine their original purpose. That rather begs the question of whether the original purpose was sufficient, and the trenchant points made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and all the evidence from migrant survivors suggest that it is not. It also begs the question: how do the Government otherwise propose to assure the International Agreements Committee that they are fulfilling their obligations under the Istanbul convention, when all those most closely involved can show quite clearly that they are not? I would appreciate it if the Minister would address both these points directly in her response.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have this opportunity to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, who referred to the International Agreements Committee, on which I have the privilege to serve. We considered the question of the ratification of the Istanbul convention. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, the chairman of that committee, will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate in a few moments, so I will not pre-empt what he has to say by way of an authoritative description of the committee’s views.

I want to add just three points. First, the Istanbul convention was signed by the coalition Government in 2012, a Government of which I was then a member. We would not have anticipated then that it would have taken so long for it to be ratified or that there would have been any difficulty in respect of non-discrimination in achieving that. I am glad the Government are bringing forward Clauses 66 to 68 to enable the extraterritorial jurisdiction measures to be dealt with. Surely now is the time and this is the Bill to take ourselves to the point where we can ratify.

Secondly, a number of us in your Lordships’ House served in the other place and realise what it takes to get as many as 135 Members of Parliament to turn up on a Friday morning to support a Private Member’s Bill, but that is what happened on 24 February 2017 to support what is now the Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Act 2017. There is a tendency in government to say, “Well, that was just a Private Member’s Bill.” No, it is an Act of Parliament that requires Ministers to set out in a Statement to the House when they have a timetable for ratification and, in the absence of such a timetable, to report annually on the situation. Back in 2017, the 135 Members who turned up on a Friday morning to support that Bill and turn it into an Act would not have expected that there would have been four annual reports, with no resolution yet in sight and no timetable published by the Government. The evidence from this House and, indeed, the other House, is that Parliament expects that to happen.

Covid-19: UK Border Health Measures

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally concur with the points that the noble Viscount makes. Central to the Government’s strategy all along has been reducing the R rate, saving lives, protecting the NHS and, ultimately, getting rid of this virus.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I understand the rationale for the decision, which is that we should seek to constrain the transmission of the virus from areas with community transmission to places where it might otherwise be brought where community transmission has been controlled and constrained. The problem at the moment is that we have significant elements of community transmission, and there are a significant number of European countries where there is now no evidence of such transmission. It is the wrong way round. Will my noble friend at least tell the House that the Government will consider whether there is a case for some specific exemptions for those countries—principally, at the moment, our neighbours in Europe—where there is no continuing evidence of community transmission of the virus?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

We will, of course, be taking such matters into consideration. I do not know if my noble friend heard my right honourable friend the Home Secretary say yesterday that bilateral conversations were going on with countries across the world to see what kind of innovations we could bring forward in order to make movement easier.