Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Michael Tomlinson Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration (Michael Tomlinson)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 3J.

It is a great pleasure to open the debate. I start by echoing and agreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who started his speech during the previous debate, just a short number of hours ago, by agreeing with what the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), said about there being nothing new to say, just pitying that he then spent 40 minutes saying nothing new.

I do not intend to emulate what the shadow Minister did on that previous occasion, because it is clear that amendment 3J is almost identical to the previous amendments that we debated and that this House rejected just a short number of hours ago. The amendment is in two parts, inserting when Rwanda may be treated as a safe country and when Rwanda must cease to be treated as a safe country. The amendment is not necessary.

Turning to the amendment from the noble Lord Anderson of Ipswich, I will make it clear once again that we will ratify the treaty only when all necessary implementation is in place. The implementation will be kept under review by the independent monitoring committee. Clause 9 of the Bill makes it clear when the Bill and its provisions come into force. Implementation continues at pace. I can confirm again that on 21 March the Rwandan Senate passed legislation ratifying the treaty. As I confirmed this afternoon, on 19 April—just last Friday—the Rwandan Parliament passed domestic legislation to implement its new asylum system.

In an attempt to reassure my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), let me say that, as we have made clear, if the monitoring committee were to raise any issues to the joint committee, standing members of the joint committee are senior officials of the Government of this country and the Government of Rwanda, and the Government will, of course, listen. I remind my right hon. and hon. Friends that it will be up to the independent monitoring committee to raise issues at any point.

There is nothing new in this amendment. Such amendments have already been rejected. Enough is enough.