Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Luke Evans Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

I was not aware of that, but it adds grist to the mill and strength to the Government’s argument for proceeding with the Rwanda policy.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

My hon. Friend took an intervention from the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who talked about safe and legal routes. One of the biggest problems is that we have not heard how many, where from and what they would look like. There are supposedly 100 million displaced people across the world. If 1% of them decide to come to the UK, that is 1 million people who have to be processed and found a country. This is a worldwide problem. If we do it as an individual country, we would create and facilitate a problem not only on our shores but on the shores where we open those centres. Does he believe the Opposition have a plan for where the centres would be, how they would be manned, how much they would cost and what those safe and legal routes would look like, especially when people are leaving the safe country of France?

[Jerome Mayhew]

The phrase “safe and legal routes” feels right, doesn’t it? It feels like we should be in favour of safe and legal routes and, speaking personally, I think they are part of a wider solution to immigration. My hon. Friend says there may be up to 100 million people currently seeking asylum. From memory, I think the figure from the United Nations report is actually 108 million.

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[Jerome Mayhew]

I am pretty settled with that last sentence. We have been a place of safety for about 80,000 from Ukraine; we have opened our arms to some 250,000 British nationals of Hong Kong descent; we have had the Syria programme, which I believe involved about 20,000; and we have had the Afghan resettlement programme, which involved about 18,000 to 20,000. All those have been safe and legal routes. The big difference is that the British Government, representing the British people, decided that those were the people we wanted to help. They were the most vulnerable, and we took the decision, not criminal gangs from abroad.

[Dr Luke Evans]

It is exactly that: the British people decided. Does my hon. Friend believe that the right approach is for Government to consult with local authorities on how many asylum seekers and refugees they can support, enabling them to come up with a number that Parliament will be able to vote on? That is pragmatic and practical while warm and welcoming to those who need help.

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend makes another good point. We must not forget that our asylum policy depends on the support and acceptance of our people. If we have a policy that is rejected by people because they feel it is unfair and does not represent their views, then we run the risk of throwing the baby of asylum and welcoming people with vulnerabilities from around the world out with the bath water. The Bill helps to maintain a welcoming stance to asylum seekers who are decided on by the Government, while maintaining public support for the policy as a whole.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Luke Evans Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

I will not give way. There is a conclusive presumption in the Bill that Rwanda is generally a safe country. There is a series of facts reinforced by statute. The courts have not concluded that there is a general risk to the safety of relocated individuals in Rwanda. Rather, as we have repeatedly set out, the treaty responds to the Supreme Court’s findings. The assurances we have had, since negotiated in our legally binding treaty with Rwanda, directly address the findings. They make detailed provision for the treatment of relocated individuals in Rwanda, ensuring that they will be offered safety and protection with no risk of refoulement. Respectfully, that responds directly to the points that were raised.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

Is the Minister aware of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ comments? It says:

“UNHCR will build on the favourable protection environment through continued advocacy and technical support to”

the Government of Rwanda. It goes on to say that it is moving from a humanitarian approach to a developmental approach, so that people will be able to have the chance of a livelihood and a safe environment to build their life for the future. Is this not exactly what Rwanda want to put across to people who find themselves there?

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[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of all 10 of the Lords amendments that are before us today. They each serve to make this shambolic mess of a Bill marginally less absurd and, as I will come to in a second, they would serve only to put in statute what Ministers have promised from the Dispatch Box. Not one of the amendments is designed to prevent the departure of flights to Rwanda, as the Prime Minister has repeatedly and wrongly implied.

We all want to end the Tory small boats chaos, and I am proud that the Labour party has consistently put forward a smart, pragmatic and sensible plan to do so, starting by going after the criminal smuggler gangs at source through a new cross-border police unit and a new security partnership with Europol. However, this Bill and the treaty that accompanies it will not contribute in any way to achieving that aim.

[Dr Evans]

Since 2020, we have seen 82 gangs disrupted and more than 400 people arrested because of the actions of this Government. I am keen to understand Labour’s idea about smashing the gangs. How much more would that cost, and what would it look like as a total percentage of numbers?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We will eradicate the activity of the criminal smuggler gangs by having a proper security partnership with our European partners and allies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that his party has spent the last eight years trashing and destroying our relationships with our European partners and allies. What we would have with a Labour Government is a basis of trust to get the results that we need to see for the British people—that is what sovereignty is all about.

The entire Rwanda debacle has absorbed a vast amount of time, energy and money that should instead have been focused on taking back control of our border security from the criminal gangs who trade in human misery. Let us not forget that more than 100,000 asylum seekers have crossed in small boats since 2020, with 40,000 arriving on this Prime Minister’s watch alone. The chaos must end, and this Government are clearly unable to restore order at the border, so it is time for them to get out of the way so that Labour can get the job done.

Before I get into the substance of the amendments, I would like to pay tribute to the noble Members of the other place, who tabled them. In so doing, they were fulfilling their constitutional, democratic and patriotic duty by scrutinising and seeking to amend the Bill, just as they would with any other piece of legislation that comes before them. They have not been intimidated or sidetracked by the Prime Minister’s mistaken assertion that the Bill should have some kind of special status or treatment, which would somehow allow Ministers to railroad it through Parliament and to drive a coach and horses through Britain’s long-standing democratic conventions. Indeed, this profoundly dismissive attitude has manifested itself in the way in which the Government have point blank refused to engage with the Lords amendments. They have rejected every one of them, rather than seeking to use them and see them as a basis for negotiation and compromise.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

I apologise; I should have said “home country.” I would like to correct the record. It was “home country”. Apologies; I mis-spoke.

Labour’s common-sense, pragmatic plan will smash the business model of the criminal gangs, deter dangerous journeys and tackle the backlog.

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will now run through the remaining nine amendments from the other place. We support each of them for the reasons I will now set out.

[Dr Luke Evans]

How much would Labour’s plan cost?

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[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I begin with an apology to you and others for the fact that I will not be in the Chamber for some part of the debate because of other parliamentary business that I have to attend?

I start my remarks by recalling that the fundamental purpose of the Bill is to locate with Parliament—rather than with decision makers in individual cases or with courts reviewing those cases—the decision on whether Rwanda is a safe country to send people to. A number of the amendments before us would undermine that fundamental purpose by transferring decisions on that question away from Parliament and back to the caseworkers and courts, so they are, I am afraid, wrecking amendments. They are incredibly elegant wrecking amendments, and they come from an honourable and fundamental opposition to the purpose of the Bill—an opposition that I entirely understand.

I confess that I did not find voting for this legislation a comfortable choice. It comes very close to the line on rule-of-law acceptability, but in my view stays just the right side of it. Crucially, it asserts parliamentary sovereignty on an issue of huge political significance, where that issue is central to the delivery of a key Government policy. That significant and central issue is whether the Government of the day are entitled to pursue a policy on illegal immigration that contains an element of effective deterrence, and I think the Government must be able to do that. For a deterrent to be effective, it must be clear. To economic migrants seeking to reach the UK under cover of our asylum system, the deterrent is that they might end up in a different country—in this case, Rwanda. For that deterrent to be meaningful, the prospect of transfer to Rwanda must be a real one that it is not easy to evade, which means that the headline judgment on Rwanda’s safety must be clear to all, subject of course, as it should be, only to persuasive individual circumstances.

I think that approach is worthy of support for two reasons. First, illegal migration is a huge problem, and the Government must be able to pursue innovative solutions to it, especially in the absence of credible alternatives.

[Dr Luke Evans]

My right hon. and learned Friend is making an excellent point about how we must be innovative. Is that not the reason why other countries are looking at what the UK is doing? The likes of Austria, Germany and Italy have all talked about using third nations because there needs to be a solution to the problem, as he is so eloquently setting out.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I am conscious, Mr Deputy Speaker, not to transgress into Second Reading territory, but I think my hon. Friend is right about that. as our right hon. and learned Friend the Minister has pointed out, other international agencies also make use of Rwanda for these purposes.

Secondly, Parliament is as able as any other body to make judgments about the safety of Rwanda. I am grateful for the information with which we have been provided, including the country information note that was referred to earlier in the debate, which in my view supports the conclusion that Rwanda is safe for the purposes of the Bill. But Parliament’s decision making on the safety of Rwanda must have integrity not just for now, but for the future. I am, I have to say, troubled by what I might describe as the absolutist, if not the eternalist nature of the wording of the Bill, which says that Rwanda is safe and must be taken as such for a variety of purposes, and Parliament’s judgment on that will stand, as far as I can see, until new legislation is passed.

That is why the noble Lord Hope’s amendments—Lords amendments 2 and 3—are interesting, although I cannot support them as they essentially transfer authority to the treaty’s monitoring committee to determine whether Rwanda remains a safe country, based on compliance or otherwise with the treaty. That cannot be right, as the Bill is intended specifically to give Parliament that authority, and Parliament should, in theory at least, retain the option to consider breaches of the treaty and nevertheless conclude that Rwanda remains a safe country for the purposes of the Bill.