Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, the international system for dealing with refugees is breaking. That is hardly a surprise given that in 1951, when the refugee convention was approved, there were about 2 million refugees, whereas now the UN estimates there are 110 million forcibly displaced persons. We need a new system, but that would take years of painstaking multilateral negotiation.

His Majesty’s Government have reached instead for unilateral solutions. To be fair, so have other countries which normally welcome refugees, including Denmark and Sweden. But unilateral approaches to complex international problems generally fail. This policy has little chance of success.

When considering any new policy, civil servants always ask the key question: “Does it represent value for money for taxpayers?” On 13 April 2022, in the early days of the Rwanda scheme, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office sought a ministerial instruction on value for money grounds. Two years and at least £260 million later, without a single refugee sent to Rwanda, evidently Sir Matthew was right. The Government persist in wanting to dump our problem on a fragile central African country, which is only now beginning to put in place systems to cope with traumatised refugees.

Other noble Lords have pointed out the constitutional, legal and moral problems of the Bill. I add my voice to those questioning the Bill’s most basic contention—that Rwanda is safe. Rwanda is safe, but only for people on the right side of the regime. It is not safe for others—not at all safe for its political opponents. It is not safe for the LGBT+ community.

Rwanda is a well-run country in its neighbourhood, but it is a dictatorship; no one can safely challenge President Kagame. No one doubts the outcome of the next presidential election on 15 July; after 24 years in office, he will be elected to a fourth term, this time for five years. Rwandan institutions depend on Paul Kagame; what happens when he goes is uncertain. A country whose institutions are only 30 years old and one man deep cannot be said to be safe for vulnerable refugees simply because it signs a treaty promising to treat those asylum seekers well. But such a country can provide reassurance by proven good performance over time. That is the position taken by the International Agreements Committee of your Lordships’ House.

Listening to today’s debate, we can all foresee that many amendments will be proposed in Committee. We can be sure that the Government will reject them, so Report will be fractious. Whatever we then send to the Commons will no doubt also be rejected. As the Prime Minister points out, we are merely an appointed House; he expects us to accept the Commons draft in toto.

After the Commons rejects Lords amendments, we will face a choice—either to cave, or to insist on, say, one essential change. That single change might relate to when the Bill’s provisions can be implemented. The International Agreements Committee set out 10 changes or tests related to structures, recruitment and training needed before the UK can safely proceed. We could insist that the Commons pays attention to that single, deep concern.

In the end, what is the point of a revising Chamber if it does not do all it can to improve fundamentally flawed legislation? I hope we do just that.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

People cannot be refouled to a different country under this treaty. They can be sent back to the United Kingdom; that is as far as it goes.

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

The Minister rests a great deal on a signature on a treaty with a country that—with the current Government—has in the last decade refouled over 4,000 refugees sent by Israel to Rwanda. That was the current Government of Rwanda behaving badly with refoulement. Why is the Minister so confident that the same Government are so fundamentally different and reformed?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

Well, my Lords, the treaty is governed by our laws, by the Government of Rwanda and by international law. For a former diplomat, the noble Lord seems to have very little confidence in the ability of treaties to regulate the conduct of Governments between one another.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments in this group, which seem eminently sensible—that is probably why the Government will reject them. I also support particularly Amendment 30, to which I have added my name. I am not going to go over the points raised by my noble friend Lady Lister, who has outlined the reasons for the importance of this amendment extremely well.

There have been consistent reports of torture being used in Rwanda, by both the military and the police. The United Nations has concluded that Rwanda does not have in place the necessary safeguards against torture or the structures to respond to it. Recent reports also confirm that torture persists in Rwanda, along with continued risks of refoulement to third countries. It is clear in those reports that Rwanda does not have in place safeguards against torture, or an effective process for responding to the allegations of torture. There is a long list of cases and reports set out by the eminent organisation Redress, and I note them for the record in Hansard.

At the UN Human Rights Council universal periodic review of Rwanda in January 2021, as has been cited by my noble friend Lady Lister, the United Kingdom Government criticised Rwanda for

“extrajudicial killings, death in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.

I ask the Minister: what has been the miraculous turnaround in the past three years?

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, I support the case put by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and ask about a current torture case concerning a journalist called Dieudonné Niyonsenga. Last month he appeared in a court in Kigali on appeal; he was sentenced three years ago to seven years in prison. He appeared in court with a wound in his head and he claimed, in that hearing, that he had been tortured. His case has been taken up by the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is not something theoretical or in the past; it is happening right now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the expert contribution of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald. I offer Green support for all the amendments in this group. I particularly highlight and commend the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and her allies for highlighting something that is crucial, but I feel that has been covered powerfully, so I will simply address most of the other amendments in this group.

It is worth stressing that the amendments would remove the legal fiction that Rwanda must be treated conclusively as safe by the courts and other decision-makers. They would allow the consideration of evidence. I am speaking in the midst of many eminent lawyers, so I will focus on the politics of this. We live in a world in which we are often told we are living with post-truth politics. At the weekend, I was in the constituency of Kingswood knocking on doors. I met some people there who were living in a post-truth environment—people who had disappeared down some very dark conspiracy rabbit holes. When you are knocking on doors, of course it is impossible to attempt to extract people from those rabbit holes in the couple of minutes you have, but it is truly terrifying—I have to say that most of them will be voting for the Reform party on Thursday, which is something the Government should have great concern about for all kinds of reasons.

Post-truth politics is one thing, but what we confront with the Rwanda Bill is post-truth law. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, said—I wrote down his words—that he was

“completely flabbergasted by the constitutional implications”.

What are the constitutional implications of post-truth law? Nothing is weighed on the reality of the world.

I want to pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about the duties of this House. Surely it is the duty of this House to ensure that we have truth- based law.