Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

Rwanda is not a safe country. This country is using the Bill as a distraction from the Government’s failure to sort out the immigration backlog. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are being spent on hotels every day. Hundreds of millions have been spent on this fantasy Rwanda policy without a single person being sent there. That money would be better spent sorting out the backlog and getting people processed.

Immigration policies are already in place, but they are not being enforced. The Home Office is working too slowly, as it has previously with passports. Processing claims quicker is the best way to free up hotels. In the past decade, the backlog of asylum claims has risen four times faster than the number claiming asylum. This is ultimately a crisis of the Government’s own making, and it has been years in the making. The system is failing and it needs fixing.

This country needs a solution to the crisis, not a distraction. The Bill claims that Rwanda is a safe country, because the Bill says that is so. That is not the type of country that Britain is. We are not like that. We believe in the rule of law and obligations under international laws and treaties. The Rwandan Government have been involved in many questionable events across Africa, including the kidnapping and beating of dissidents abroad. The Rwanda policy is an attempt by the Government to look tough and to distract the country from the sorry state they have got us into. Even on the off-chance that flights to Rwanda take off, they will deal with less than 1% of asylum claims. It is a Tory vanity project. It will not solve any problem. As a country, we are better than this.

Labour’s plan to tackle the criminal gangs directly with a cross-border police unit and to clear the backlog is the only way to stop the small boats. Vanity projects for headlines are not befitting of such a serious issue. The Government should go back to the drawing board—I bet we will be here in a few months or a year.