Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord German, could not move the amendment in his name. I can tell that House that he is a marvellous chairman of the Parliament Choir and has an unrivalled ability to speak the poetry of Dylan Thomas with all the Welsh fervour that it demands.

I understand the good intentions of those who are putting forward the amendments in this group, but I fear they suffer from a real difficulty. In particular, in Amendment 23 the new subsection (1A)(c) would exempt a person who is

“a victim of human trafficking”.

The problem with that is that it drives a coach and horses through the Government’s intentions, which are, of course, to draw the category for exceptions extremely narrowly, so that most people do go to Rwanda, and therefore it is a definite deterrent to people leaving France and trying to get to this country as illegal immigrants. That is the whole point of the legislation, and it needs that sharpness and narrowness of exclusivity to achieve that aim. I fear that, in the hands of any sensible immigration lawyer, simply saying that the person might be a victim of human trafficking opens the whole thing to abuse.

I make that point because I have just been reading in the newspaper this morning that the Home Office is about to buy, or has bought, 16,000 homes in this country to house those illegal asylum seekers who are at the moment in hotels. It wishes to transfer those people, because of the public cost, to residential houses or flats, and that is what it is proposing to do. This housing they are taking is social housing and private rental housing, particularly in areas such as Bradford, Hull and Teesside, which are low-rent areas and obviously comparatively deprived areas. I think this shows the domestic consequences of allowing in the present number of illegal migrants and why the Government have to bear those in mind as well as our undoubted sympathy for those who may be suffering from human trafficking, slavery and so forth. These factors clearly have to be balanced; the domestic responsibilities of the Government with the concern for illegal immigration of this kind. I hope the House will bear that in mind when it considers these amendments.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, can he answer a question? Under Home Office figures, 78% of those people who have been referred to the national referral mechanism for being trafficked or in modern slavery have been successful and, by definition, a woman who is trafficked here—not smuggled but trafficked—will be unaware of the final destination. It will be against her will. How will she be deterred by this Bill?

[Lord Horam (Con)]

She will be deterred because the Bill is designed to send people to Rwanda, with a very narrow area of exemptions for those who cannot be sent to Rwanda. That is the way it will operate. Obviously, it will need to be spelled out, and the Government will have to put behind it all the explanations they can through modern social media et cetera to get across the message to the people who are at present in France that there is a real possibility that they will end up not in the UK but in Rwanda. That is how it works. That is how it is supposed to work, and I submit that widening it to all these other possibilities will detract from that deterrent element and therefore destroy the purpose of the Bill, with the domestic consequences that we can see.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, the power of this debate has been absolutely extraordinary. I think the House very much admires the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom—the Minister—who looks to me like a man alone today. I very much hope that he will be able to produce something.

I support all the amendments. Listening to the debate, I was struck by one exchange which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, started and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, followed up. I have wondered why the Government had drafted the Bill in the way that they have. By that, I have in mind its extraordinary beginning, which says:

“The purpose of this Act is to … deter unlawful migration”.


The next subsection begins “To advance that purpose—”, and then the Bill sets out the fact that this agreement has been entered into. This is obviously not there for political reasons only. It must be there to send a message to the courts that have to construe it. I am assuming—I very much hope that the Minister will confirm this—that it is in there not for political but for legal purposes. It is to send the message to the courts as to what the purpose and framework of the Bill is.

If that is right, I assume that what the courts are supposed to do is to construe this very unusual Bill in the context of its purpose. The courts are being asked, very unusually, to exclude the courts from determining whether Rwanda is a safe country. They are being asked to do that to deter illegal immigration. The exchange between the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Deben, underlined completely that there are certain categories of people where deterrence never comes into it—for example, the person who is being trafficked or the modern slave.

Presumably, having put all this material into the Bill, the Government intend that the courts should construe it in accordance with its purpose, giving an appropriately targeted meaning to these exclusions of court intervention. If it is absolutely apparent for an individual that deterrence could not possibly be given effect to by the Bill or its terms, obviously its unusual terms do not apply. Can the Minister confirm that the purpose of all these strange provisions—I have in mind Clause 1—is so that the courts have a very clear steer as to what the purpose is, and that they will construe the Bill in accordance with that purpose?

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, Mary is 19; she is in Gezira, in Sudan, just by the Ethiopian border. She has been offered employment as domestic staff in Dubai and her passport is taken away for the journey. The employment agency that recruited her from the refugee camp—because she is displaced, like many hundreds of thousands in Gezira—have also taken a record of her family and where they are from, including her grandparents, who are in Darfur. En route to Dubai, she is told that she will no longer work in domestic staff with a named family; she is now going to be in hospitality, and she is quite excited about this. However, on the way, she is rerouted to Europe because her agency said that the hospitality company and the family are no longer able to accommodate her, so she has an alternative job. She will now be going to Birmingham in the UK. This is an extremely long journey for her; she has no choice, of course, because she does not have any papers or a passport. Now that she is in a situation where she is really concerned about how she is getting to Birmingham and for her own safety, she is reminded that those who arranged the travel—originally to Dubai, remember—know where her family are. When she arrives, it is not hospitality in Birmingham—it is prostitution.

This Bill, and the Illegal Migration Act, will mean that she is detained in the UK, not referred to any support, and will be sent to a different country. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, thinks that the Bill will deter her from believing the company who recruited her to Dubai, and she will be deterred from coming to Birmingham. The nonsensity of it is quite hard to credit. We have the national referral mechanism for a purpose, which is to ensure that Mary does not become a double victim, but that is no longer an option for Mary. She is just an example, but it is not a theoretical one, and if noble Lords do not believe me, they should believe the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and the excellent work he does, and I hope the Minister was listening careful to his contribution.

According to the latest Home Office data on the arrival on small boats, between 1 January 2018 and 30 June 2023 some 9% were in this category; that is 7,923 people who were referred to the NRM. They are not all Marys; there are many other circumstances, but they follow a very similar trajectory of being lied to, trafficked and blackmailed. The Illegal Migration Act adds an extra sinister element to this blackmail, because Mary would be able to stay in the UK only if she is actively part of the prosecution of the gang in Gezira on the Ethiopian border, which is an impossibility.

The legislation put forward by the Government in the Illegal Migration Act will also no longer be able to be open to Mary. I asked the Minister at Second Reading how the Illegal Migration Act will continue to protect the victims of trafficking—an assertion he made—and he said he would write to me; I have not yet received that letter, so I hope he will be very clear today as to how these people will be protected. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in his powerful contribution, according to Home Office information,

“the majority (78%) of reasonable grounds decisions for small boat arrivals since 2018 have been positive. Of the 780 conclusive grounds decisions issued, 78% were positive”.

These are not people who are gaming a system or, as the noble Lord, Lord Horam said, illegal asylum seekers: they are victims of a heinous crime, many of whom had no idea they would end up as part of a prostitution racket in England.

On Monday, I pressed the Advocate-General on the Government’s official position on whether Rwanda currently has the safeguards in place for those who would be relocated. I remind the Committee that I asked:

“If the Rwandan Government are ‘working towards’ putting safeguards in place, that means they are not currently in place. Is that correct?”


The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, replied, “It must do”. So the Government have said that Rwanda is not safe yet and I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, that this is not us saying that Rwanda is not safe yet—the Minister said that it is

“working towards having the safeguards in place”.—[Official Report, 12/2/24; cols. 64-65.]

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Regarding the applications to the ARAP scheme, clearly, I am not qualified to comment on individual circumstances as described by the noble Lord. I am afraid I do not know the precise details of who is qualified to apply under the ARAP scheme, so I will find that out and come back to the noble Baroness in due course. I cannot give any further comment at this point.

I have heard what has been said, and I will now turn to Amendments 70, 73 and 85, proposed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and Amendments 18, 23, and 47, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German. The UK has a proactive duty to identify victims of modern slavery, and we remain committed to ensuring that where indicators that someone is a victim of modern slavery are identified by first responders, they continue to be referred into the national referral mechanism for consideration by the competent authorities. Steps will be taken in all cases to identify whether a person may be a victim of modern slavery, and if a person is referred into the national referral mechanism, a reasonable grounds decision will be made.

Amendment 70 would act to impede the provisions already passed in the Nationality and Borders Act and the Illegal Migration Act that introduced the means to disqualify certain individuals from the national referral mechanism on grounds of public order before a conclusive grounds decision is considered. The amendment is also unnecessary—it is important to be clear on this point—as the Government of Rwanda have systems in place to safeguard relocated individuals with a range of vulnerabilities, including those concerning mental health and gender-based violence.

Regarding victims of modern slavery, Article 5(2)(d) of the treaty obliges the UK to provide Rwanda with

“the outcome of any decision in the United Kingdom as to whether the Relocated Individual is a victim of trafficking”,

and this includes positive reasonable grounds decisions, as well as positive conclusive grounds decisions. Article 13 of the treaty makes specific provision that Rwanda will have regard to information provided by the UK

“about a Relocated Individual relating to any special needs that may arise as a result of them being a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, and shall take all necessary steps to ensure that these needs are accommodated”.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

This is the point I made at Second Reading. Section 22 of the Illegal Migration Act disapplies all of what the Minister just said when someone arrives by an irregular route. It disapplies the process of someone claiming that they are a victim of trafficking; it disapplies their ability to be referred to the NRM; and it disapplies the Home Office or the receiving officer taking this information. How are they interacting?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I will repeat the point: the first responders will be expected to refer individuals into the NRM where there are indicators of modern slavery. One of those indicators is whether they claim to be victims of modern slavery.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am still waiting on the letter. Section 22 of the Illegal Migration Act, on modern slavery, disapplies that. It is not possible for that to happen under the Illegal Migration Act.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I repeat the points that I have made. I will write the letter to the noble Lord. I have the information, but it is incredibly lengthy and I do not want to repeat it all now. I will make sure it is put down in a letter to the noble Lord.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that and will of course make sure that he is copied in to the letter. I heard very clearly what he said, and I speak on behalf of my noble and learned friend. Clearly, we would not wish to argue for a lack of morality in the safeguards that we are putting in place for vulnerable people.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I have a specific question to ask. I do not doubt the Minister’s motives or morality; I think that doing this is just wrong. On 12 July—I checked the record—the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Murray, told the House when we were voting on the trafficking amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill that only British nationals could be referred to the NRM. The Minister needs to be very clear in confirming that any national who arrives on a small boat can now be referred to the NRM. That is the clarification that I am seeking from the Minister; it is a very simple question.

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[Lord Hoffmann (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Clarke asked whether there was any precedent for the kind of legislation we are considering, in which some question of fact is declared to be the case to the exclusion of any contrary decision by a court. There are such precedents, but you have to go a long way back in our history to find them.

In 1531, there was an unfortunate incident at a dinner party given by the Bishop of Rochester. All the people who ate their dinner became sick, and one of them died. This was not, at the time, put down to the inadequacy of the health and safety laws in the 16th century, but suspicion fell upon the cook. The King had a horror of poisoning. He was more or less a contemporary of Lucrezia Borgia and recognised that it was being used as a political weapon all over the country. He came down to Parliament, to your Lordships’ House, and promoted a Bill that became an Act. It declared, first, that poisoning was a form of treason; secondly, that the penalty for it was to be boiled alive; and, thirdly—this is the point—that the cook had been guilty of this crime and no trial was to take place. They were probably concerned that some lefty lawyers might get the cook off if it went to trial. The result was that the cook was duly boiled alive before an appreciative audience at Smithfield. That is the sort of precedent which one has to look at in order to justify what is being done now.

Since then, for centuries, we have had the development of the principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers—principles which English constitutional lawyers have written about with pride and foreign lawyers have written about with admiration. I suggest to your Lordships that that is where we ought to stay.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps it is only the House of Lords that when asked to find a precedent can refer back to 1531. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman, that I was aware of that issue, because I have seen the Act. It was on display in the National Archives in its exhibition on treason last year. I think the Minister has also seen it. It was also noted that it was repealed quite shortly afterwards.

[Lord Hoffmann (CB)]

Once the cook was dead.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

The Government are asking us to be the perpetual judge of the legislation and actions of another country. That puts the legislature in an unusual position. In fact, it puts it into a unique position, specifically for this country. I am not a judge on Rwandan legislation, policy or actions. I have been to Rwanda; I respect it greatly and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. I have been massively impressed with the development of Rwanda that is in their hands.

The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, referred to the eloquent points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lords, Lord McDonald and Lord Cashman, with regard to torture. She told us that if we wanted to be a judge, we should speak to Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader who is currently under house arrest. I have. I have been in her house, and I have asked her that question. Subsequent to my meeting the opposition member, officials of the Rwanda Government asked the hotel that I was staying at to inform on me. I am not a judge as to whether that means that Rwanda is a safe country. That is one example—I think, a bad example. It is probably an illustrative example. However, I am not a judge on that—our courts are. That is why we have them here.

We are asked not just to pass a “Rwanda is safe” Bill but to pass—

[Baroness D'Souza (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I want to add to his experience that, the minute I had visited Victoire Ingabire, my phone was nicked.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The Minister might see two examples and ask when it becomes a pattern. Again, I am not a judge for it. As I was saying, we are not just asked to judge that Rwanda is a safe country under this legislation but we are asked to agree to legislation that states that Rwanda will never be unsafe. How on earth can we possibly do that?

On Monday, the Minister found it incredibly difficult to determine that Rwanda is currently safe. I remind the Committee of his response—because it is worth reminding the Committee, if not him. My noble friend Lady Hamwee asked whether there would be safeguards in place to make Rwanda safe. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, said:

“My Lords, it is a matter of working towards having the safeguards in place”.


I then asked:

“If the Rwandan Government are ‘working towards’ putting safeguards in place, that means they are not currently in place. Is that correct?”


The noble and learned Lord said:

“It must do”.


That is the Government saying that it is not currently safe. Why is that important for this group of amendments? It is important because I later asked the Minister to confirm that

“no relocation would take place until those safeguards would be in place”.

The noble and learned Lord replied:

“I can answer the first part of the noble Lord’s question in the affirmative”.—[Official Report, 12/2/24; cols. 64-70.]


We know that there will be no relocation until safeguards are in place that Rwanda will be a safe country. The Minister was unable to confirm when that would be the case. However, the Bill is asking us not only to jump ahead of that but to deny courts from ever considering whether Rwanda could be unsafe. It is still quite hard to work out the rationality of where we are.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will make a brief postscript to the very powerful interventions that have been made by many other Members, including and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I point to some practical aspects. The fact of the matter is that the asylum system is in chaos. The number of cases that are waiting to be assessed would fill Wembley Stadium. This Government are in real difficulty and the next Government, whoever they are, will be in equal difficulty if we do not find a way forward. I accept all the legal difficulties that have been raised very effectively, but let us also keep in mind the practical aspects, and that if this is allowed to continue there will be a very unfortunate effect on relations between communities in our country.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

The noble Lord is an expert in these areas. If the Bill goes through, what is his estimate of how many people will be relocated from the backlog that he has referred to, and over how many years? I think it could take up to 20 years. How will that deplete Wembley Stadium?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I do not think that anybody has any idea of the answer to that. That is one of the difficulties. I am pointing to the social difficulties that will also follow. Therefore, we must give the Government some space in order to make an impression on the future inflow of cases to this country.

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[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, the point of the principle of the Bill is to remove the matter from the consideration of the civil courts and to place it before the court of Parliament; to take the matter from the civil courts and place it in the international and diplomatic sphere.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

What are the mechanisms —since, as my noble friend Lord Scriven said, the courts are no longer able to look at this—by which we can judge whether Rwanda will adhere to its treaty obligations? The Minister said that this is now going to be a duty of the court of Parliament: what is our mechanism in Parliament for doing that?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

First, I remind the noble Lord of some of the constitutional truths that were adverted to in the debate on Monday. No Parliament can bind its successor. Parliament can always come back and revisit matters in future. On the specific point of how Parliament will come to learn of any matters that are of concern, I will refer to this in greater detail in the course of my submission, but I can refer the noble Lord to the independent monitoring committee which the treaty and the Bill establish, and to the work that that will do, feeding back to the joint committee of the two Governments.

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[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

First, as the noble and learned Lord is perfectly well aware, the Bill blocks the possibility of refoulement and of return to any country other than the United Kingdom. In relation to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that Parliament is a court is a familiar and well-known concept; it is a name by which Parliament is well known.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Not on the theory point but on the practical point of what the Bill states, can the Minister just expand a bit more? He said that there will be a monitoring committee that will report to the joint committee of the Governments. How will they report to Parliament if we are to make a judgment, subsequently, that we wish to repeal this?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

As I said to the noble Lord when first responding to him, I will address those matters in more detail in the course of my submission.

Clause 2 creates a conclusive presumption that Rwanda is generally safe and will not send someone to another country in breach of the refugee convention. I respectfully disagree with my noble friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol and others that this amounts to an abuse, far less to a constitutional innovation. In relation to a point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, made on the matter of how the courts might respond, the noble and learned Lord put it to the Committee that there would be one case that would decide. I congratulate him on his optimism, but he must surely recognise—reflecting on the practice of immigration across the decades—that what happens is that, where a position is advanced and set forth before the court, it will remain open subsequently for people to argue that there has been a change in fact or a change in circumstances. Therefore, the proposal that the noble and learned Lord advances to the Committee that there would simply be one case that would determine all things is, I regret, a proposition to which I cannot accede.

The conclusive presumption as to the safety of Rwanda enables Parliament to confirm that Rwanda is safe for the purposes of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership. It reflects the strength of commitment from the Government of Rwanda on the safety and support that they will provide to individuals relocated there. Clause 2(2) notes that a decision-maker means the Secretary of State, immigration officers and the courts, including tribunals, when considering a decision relating to the relocation of an individual to Rwanda under provision of the Immigration Act. Clause 2 also excludes several general grounds of challenge and, as set out in subsection (3), prohibits generalised appeals or reviews.

As I have said already, the Government have signed an internationally legally binding treaty responding to the Supreme Court’s conclusions, in particular on the issue of refoulement. We have been clear that Rwanda will not remove any individual relocated there to another country, except to the United Kingdom in very limited circumstances. The implementation of these provisions in practice will be kept under review by the independent monitoring committee, whose role is enhanced by the treaty, and which will ensure compliance with the obligations. Therefore, as set out in subsection (4), there is no reason for a court or tribunal to consider any claim that Rwanda may remove a person to another state, that an individual may not receive fair and proper consideration of an immigration claim in Rwanda or that Rwanda will not abide by the treaty terms. Finally, subsection (5) is a “notwithstanding” provision, requiring courts to honour—I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I am so sorry, I thought the noble Lord was poised to intervene.

Finally, subsection (5) is a “notwithstanding” provision, requiring courts to honour the previous clauses, notwithstanding all relevant domestic law, the Human Rights Act 1998 to the extent that it is disapplied by this Bill, and any alternative interpretation of international law reached by the court or tribunal.

The effect of Amendments 19, 21, 25 and 28, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, would be to remove the requirement for decision-makers and courts or tribunals to treat conclusively Rwanda as a safe country. That is similar to the terms of Amendment 22, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German. These amendments would allow individuals to present evidence to challenge removal decisions on the grounds that Rwanda is not generally a safe country.

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[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

There is no obligation on the monitoring committee to publish its report, so how will we know what they are?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, as I said to the noble Lord, this matter is to be dealt with in further groupings. In the interests of saving the Committee’s time, I will revert to consideration of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett.

The treaty which the United Kingdom has agreed with Rwanda makes express provision for the treatment of relocated individuals, demonstrating the commitment of both parties to upholding fundamental human rights and freedoms without discrimination and in line with both our domestic and international obligations. Rwanda’s obligations under these international agreements are embedded too in its domestic legal provisions.

The High Court found that it was generally safe for individuals relocated under the MEDP to be in Rwanda. In view of its finding on the issue of refoulement, the Supreme Court found it unnecessary to decide the question of whether individuals were generally at risk of ill treatment in Rwanda. The Court of Appeal likewise did not reach a conclusion on this point. This means that the ruling of the High Court on the point of general safety remains undisturbed.

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[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, just to be clear, I will be very “Committeeish” about this group of amendments. In the light of that, I will just ask a couple of questions relating to my Amendments 69 and 87, which deal with the value for money and cost of the Bill.

I refer to the point that I made earlier, that the Committee needs no reminding that the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office required a ministerial direction because he repeated his earlier advice to the Public Accounts Committee on 11 December that the Home Office had no evidence that the Bill provided value for money. Therefore, can the Minister start with respect to my Amendments 69 and 87, which call for an ongoing assessment of the costs, as well as an economic impact assessment? Will he share with us a little more detail about the conclusions that Ministers have come to about value for money as opposed to what the Permanent Secretary said? No doubt, the Minister will say that it will act as a deterrent and therefore that is the value for money, but of course that is exactly the point that the Permanent Secretary was also making, that there is no evidence that it will act as a deterrent either. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s assertion and the evidence for it other than just the belief that this will act as a deterrent.

Perhaps the Minister will update us on how much has been spent so far. My calculation got to nearly £400 million. What is the budget, is that the amount that has already been spent, and what is the projected spend over the next period, should the Government get their way with the Bill?

Amendment 86 refers specifically to the establishment of the monitoring committee. I remind the Committee that much of our discussion has been about the Bill asserting that Rwanda is safe and all of us saying that the Government are making an assertion about the factual situation now, whereas the treaty talks about how Rwanda may or will become safe should certain things happen. I have tabled Amendment 86, supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, simply to get some more information about the monitoring committee referred to in Article 15 of the treaty. The particular word in my Amendment 86 to which I refer the Committee is “fully”, rather than a part being established here and another part there.

The Government have made all sorts of points about the monitoring committee. Given that it is supposed to oversee the operation of the treaty and the improvements that are supposed to happen in Rwanda to satisfy us that it is a safe country, could the Minister tell us where we are on the monitoring committee? I apologise if other noble Lords are up to date on this, but perhaps he could tell me how many members of the committee have been appointed, how many are expected to be appointed, where they come from, whether the committee has yet agreed the terms of reference that it is supposed to agree and whether they have been published. I have not seen them; I do not know whether anybody else has, but have they been published yet? If not, when will they be published?

There should be an enhanced initial monitoring period; how is that going? Has it started? It says it will be for a minimum of three months; presumably that does not start until the treaty is enacted or has it started already? When does it start? We need to know when that initial period of three months ends. Can it be extended to become six months, if deemed necessary? The treaty tells us that the monitoring committee needs to engage a support team. What or who is the support team? Has it been engaged and who is funding it?

Article 15(9) says:

“The Monitoring Committee shall develop a system and process to enable Relocated Individuals and legal representatives to lodge confidential complaints direct to the Monitoring Committee of alleged failures to comply with the obligations in this Agreement (including as to the treatment of a Relocated Individual), or any element of the processing of their asylum claim in accordance with this Agreement”.


How is that going and where are we with that?

Obviously, this is Committee, which is the time to ask some of these detailed questions. The wonderful philosophical discussions and debates that we have had are very important to this Bill, but there are some details in there that are fundamental for the Committee and this Chamber to understand, given the importance of the monitoring committee to the Bill. We need to understand how that is going as we continue to consider what amendments may be brought forward on Report— for us to consider further and maybe even vote on—on how the monitoring is going, how the Government expect it to happen and what decisions we may or may not come to on commencement.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 74 in my name in this group and associate myself with all the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked. I will also, with this amendment, seek to follow the money.

We heard in the previous group but one what I thought was an interesting exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Green, and the Minister with regard to the concern about the social fabric and social contract of our nation when it comes to the high level of migration. It is the case that, over the past five years, the number of those seeking asylum in the UK has gone up from 35,000 to 75,000—that is correct.

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[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is completely right on his numbers; migration is about 10 times, sometimes more, the inflow of asylum seekers. But the issue that concerns public opinion—maybe because it is always on television or because it is the only thing that the Government are talking about—is indeed asylum. None the less, the real problem, as the noble Lord implied, is the scale of immigration, and we should be under no illusions about what that means for our future.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord and, to some extent, I agree with him. If we have a legal migration system that has been a catastrophic failure, and the Government then seem to wish to scapegoat those fleeing conflict or danger to claim asylum here, I am not surprised that this dominates the debate. But the Government should not look at us when it comes to that situation.

I found it interesting that, when I asked the noble Lord, Lord Green, who supports this Bill, what impact it would have on that point with regards to the backlog—the Wembley Stadium—he gave me an honest answer and said that he did not know. I think he said that the Government do not know; I think he said no one knows. Yet we have paid nearly £400 million not to know. It is the most expensive question never to be answered in the history of the Treasury.

It will get worse, and Amendment 74 therefore tries to get a bit more detail about this. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is absolutely right. The Permanent Secretary did not seek ministerial direction simply, as the Minister alluded to before, because there was maybe a question around this, because it is novel. The Permanent Secretary is the accounting officer; it is his duty to say whether a policy would be value for money for the British taxpayer. He was unable to do that, so he asked to be overruled by the Minister. What was quite extraordinary was that, as we now know from his submission in December, part of the ministerial direction was not to tell Parliament of an extra £100 million that was given as a second tranche under this scheme—another large swathe of funding.

We were told by the noble Lord, Lord Murray, during the passage of what became the Illegal Migration Act, that the costs of the scheme were dependent on a per-person basis. That was correct, but we now know that it was not the full answer. Part of the scheme will be on a per-person basis, but the £100 million was a credit line to the Government of Rwanda. So I would like the Minister, when he responds to this debate, to be quite clear and to tell us what that credit line is being used for. We do not know and, if the court of Parliament is to make a judgment, we need a bit more evidence.

The Hope hostel, which is the receiving centre for the people who are due to be relocated, is a private business. It is operated on a private sector contract and the Government say that they will not release information about what we are paying for because it is a Rwandan private sector contract. The Minister said to me in his letter that the Home Office cannot divulge information about the contracts that other countries have made—but we have paid for it. Not only have we paid for it, we will be paying for it. So I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us if there will be another tranche of funding for the Hope hostel in the next financial year, because it is on an annual rolling contract.

This issue also comes down to the fact that that centre can accommodate 200 people, with a typical processing time of a fortnight, I was told. So that will be a maximum of about 5,000 people a year, unless there are Hope hostels 2, 3 and 4 that we will be paying for. We do not know yet. If that is the case and we look at the Wembley Stadium backlog of at least 90,000 people, at 5,000 people a year it is going to take nearly 20 years to clear it.

So far, it has cost just shy of £400 million. What if it is on a per-person basis? That is where the noble Lord, Lord Murray, was absolutely right because, after we pleaded for the impact assessment of the Illegal Migration Bill, he gave that to us and we were duly grateful. It shows that per-person relocation will cost £169,000, on Home Office estimates. I remind the Committee that that is £63,000 more than processing someone and them staying here in the UK. It is 60 grand per person more expensive to the British taxpayer to relocate them in a scheme that is going to take 20 years and has already cost us nearly half a billion pounds.

If it will be 5,000 people a year, what are we looking at if we times that by £169,000? In one year, that will be just shy of £1 billion for two flights. That is fine if this is about the headlines and the Prime Minister saying, “I’ve got the planes taking off”. It is not fine for the British taxpayer. It is equally not fine if the whole purpose of this was to be a deterrent, because the noble Lord, Lord Green, is correct in one respect: if you are clearing the backlog, you want fewer people to come in the first place. That would require a deterrent rate of 100%. The Government’s best estimate, on a medium-term basis, is that there will likely be a break-even point with a deterrent effect of 50%. That is in the impact assessment. So the Home Office itself is estimating that this whole deterrence scheme is just going to halve the number of boats.

We already know that that does not matter, of course, because the Prime Minister announced in the new year that the deterrent effect was working. But we know that it is not, so I would be grateful if the Minister could outline what has been spent within MEDP—the migration and economic development partnership—in a scheme-by-scheme, line-by-line and project-by-project statement. If the scheme came under official development assistance, it would have to be put down under the DevTracker. But it is not under the DevTracker system of transparency at the FCO: it is from the Home Office, so I would like to see the equivalent of that published and the Minister to state whether the rolling contract is to be paid for another year, going forward. I would be very grateful if the Minister could say, at the end of year 1 of this scheme being in operation—just year 1, I am not going to be too ambitious—what the deterrent effect, the total cost and the per-person cost will be. Ultimately, if we are talking about a Budget coming up, surely we should be straight with the British taxpayer.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I will introduce my Amendments 81 and 82 in this group, which I have the privilege of sharing with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. I remind the Committee that the Government concede that this policy is novel and might even concede that it is controversial. There are grave concerns about whether Rwanda is currently safe and further concerns, raised eloquently earlier today, that even if it becomes safe at some point—for example, as a result of the successful implementation of the treaty—it may not be safe for ever.

Throughout these debates, the Government have relied heavily on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty—not executive sovereignty. That is why Amendment 81, which I share with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and which is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, makes commencement a matter for the Secretary of State but to be approved by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and both Houses of Parliament by way of resolution. It is hence not executive fiat. Currently, Clause 9(1) says:

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


Treaty ratification is for the most part a matter for the Executive, but if we are to be the high court of Parliament and oust the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts of the land, parliamentary sovereignty at the very least requires parliamentary commencement. I leave to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, Amendment 82 on his system of rolling sunsets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

A very good touchstone of when lawyers realise that—if I may respectfully say—the argument does not quite work is when they start referring to spirits of things. With great respect, that is not a vested right. If you have a right to asylum, you have a right to asylum. Under this Bill, you also have a right to asylum. What this changes is where you have the right to asylum.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

The person who would have a right to asylum in the UK under this Bill would no longer have the right to asylum in the UK. It is completely different. They may have a right to asylum in Rwanda, but that is not the right that they had when they were here which is going to be taken away from them.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

Will the noble Lord explain why if I come here and am entitled to asylum that is not a right?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

The right is to make a claim for asylum. That is the vested right absolutely. The right is the right to asylum.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

In the UK.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

It does not work if the noble Lord shouts at me when he is sitting down. I am happy to give way. I hear what he says—that it is the right to asylum in the UK, and I am respectfully suggesting that is not the case under the law. The hour is late, and we will no doubt come back to this.