Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Michael Shanks Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to a priest in my constituency for recently bringing to my attention the film “A Man for all Seasons”, which I confess I had never seen. A quote from it is very relevant today:

“Some men think the earth is round, others think it flat. It is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?”

The proposition before us today asks us to accept that Government can simply define “facts” as facts, even if they are not so. The attempt to bend our entire legal system to fit the will of Government is a high price to pay for some meagre political cover for a party that promised to deal with this genuine issue—Members from across the House would agree that it is that—and has singly failed to do so. We see, as we have seen in the past five and a half hours, the Prime Minister appeasing his right flank with promises of amendments later in order to bring some people on side, while others are debating how those very amendments would pull them away from supporting the Bill. A complete mess is playing out before us.

What a distance this Tory party has come. Its former leader, now brought back from the wilderness as Lord Cameron, said only a decade ago:

“I believe that immigration has brought significant benefits to Britain...this is our island story: open, diverse and welcoming, and I am immensely proud of it-”

From that, we get to the repugnant rhetoric of the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), in one of the most appalling speeches I have ever heard—he is not in his place, but his was a shameful speech; to the spectacle of the Immigration Minister resigning from his post, not in protest at the Government’s novel policy, but because it does not go far enough; and to speech after speech by Government Members criticising the Bill, but then saying they are going to support it.

Perhaps more important than any of the legal challenges is the moral case for why the Bill must be blocked. I take issue with the idea that we should not think about the morality of these issues. We talk about planes, boats, targets and backlogs, and forget the human beings who are seeking shelter and a better life. The Home Office’s own statistics show that at least six out of 10 of those who made the dangerous channel crossing will be recognised as refugees through the asylum process. Given that many are fleeing extreme situations to embark on one of the most dangerous routes possible, how can the Bill possibly stand as any kind of deterrent?

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that those who support refugees in our country deserve our respect and should be commended by the House for their excellent work in local communities up and down this land?

[Michael Shanks]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Over decades, immigrants have contributed so much to the country that we enjoy today, not least to our public services, and we should give them immense thanks.

Instead of thinking of other solutions to deal with the criminal gangs that are causing such misery and death as they smuggle people across the channel, the Government have decided to hold firm to a course of action that has already cost us hundreds of millions of pounds and, as we have heard throughout the debate, will cost us even more. Instead of challenging the criminal gangs at source and building better co-operation with our European neighbours to tackle them, we have a Government fixated on a plan that the Home Secretary himself does not seem to be particularly convinced by. And for what? For a law that is unlikely to succeed in even the aims it has put forward.

The assumption made in the Bill is not that Rwanda is a safe country but that all decision makers must treat it as such. In other words, they have to put aside any reality they may know and accept that Rwanda is a safe country for the purposes of decision making. There will be neither recourse to appeal on the basis that someone removed to Rwanda may be sent to another country, even if it could be demonstrated that that was a genuine possibility, nor recourse to appeal on the basis that a person may not receive fair consideration of their asylum claim, because the Government have decided that these things are all safe.

The provisions mean that only in exceptional personal circumstances would an individual have a means of legally challenging the decision. It is a deeply unsettling proposition that the Government are removing one of the key components of constitutional democracy—the right of any citizen to test any law in an independent court. Never could that be more important than on an issue of human rights.

The question of parliamentary sovereignty has already been clarified. Lord Hope stated:

“Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute. It is no longer right to say that its freedom to legislate admits of no qualification whatever.”

The Bill leaves open the possibility of individual challenge to the ECHR and, as we heard from a number of Members, we might be back here, a few months from now, discussing that very issue as the Government seek to withdraw us from the ECHR.

Until a few months ago, I was in the classroom teaching pupils how to identify truth from sources of information, among other things. We told young people that there is such a thing as objective truth, and yet here I am, in the so-called mother of Parliaments, faced with a morally reprehensible and legally questionable farce—a charade that even most of those who will, I suspect, eventually be persuaded to walk through the Aye Lobby do not actually endorse. At the heart of the issue is the idea that a Government can simply state what is true, even if the evidence points the other way. It is for this House to challenge the Government’s shoddy attempt to do that and to do the right thing by voting down the Bill.