Rwanda: Memorandum of Understanding

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town for several reasons, of which three are particularly important. I hope the Minister will offer a satisfactory response to them.

First, MoUs are not legally binding documents; they involve no legal obligations on either side and they are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Therefore, to replace them is to emasculate our democracy. There are already threats to democratic practices in our country, and I do not think we need to add to them.

Secondly, given not just this Government’s record on migration but that of the previous one, there is always reason to worry about what they might do with the licence given to them to replace legal documents with memoranda of understanding. The important thing is that memoranda of understanding can easily become a kind of camouflage or cover-up under which you can write almost anything that you want.

Finally, asylum seekers will have no understanding of the prevailing conditions in Rwanda and therefore cannot know what effective representation they should make—hence there is always a danger that the MoU will badly damage their basic rights.

In the light of all this, it is not at all surprising that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that this proposal is incompatible with the 1951 refugee convention. It is not just him; a lot of other people have also reached that conclusion. I therefore fully support my noble friend Lady Hayter and hope that the Minister can reassure us that this will not become common practice.