Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Michael Tomlinson and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

The answer is that this Prime Minister has placed around his Cabinet table the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer)—a veterans’ Minister sitting at the highest level. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has served our country, as have many right hon. and hon. Members across the House. We will not let veterans down. That is the reassurance that has been given from this Dispatch Box and in the other place by the noble Lord Sharpe.

The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) expressed optimism on Monday. I confess that I too am an optimist. May I take this opportunity, perhaps in the optimistic hope that this might be my last opportunity during the passage of the Bill, to thank all the Bill team in the Home Office for their extraordinary work? It is a team effort, but may I praise one who has gone above and beyond, whose voice, I hope, recovers? She knows who I am talking about. I thank the parliamentary Clerks for their advice and assistance, not least in our marathon Reasons Committee sessions. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for always ensuring that I have been in order.

To conclude, we have made it abundantly clear that our priority is to stop the boats. We simply cannot stand by and allow people smugglers to control who enters our country and to see more lives being lost at sea. We have an obligation to the public and to those who are being exploited by criminal gangs to stop this vile trade and protect our borders. Letting this Bill pass now will send a clear signal that if people come to the United Kingdom illegally they will not be able to stay. I commend the motion to the House.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lords in the other place for all the hard work they have done in trying to amend the Bill, which is quite frankly a sham and a con. I would like to highlight the restraint that they have exercised. Despite the deeply damaging nature of this legislation, in terms of its impact on our constitutional conventions and our adherence as a country to the rule of law, none of the amendments before us today seeks to wreck the Bill or the unworkable, unaffordable and unlawful scheme the Bill seeks to enact. Not one of them would prevent flights to Rwanda from taking off or stop the Government flogging this dead horse of a policy. Instead, the amendments seek only to commit the Government to the promises they have already made about who will be sent to Rwanda, and to clarify the mechanisms that will underpin that process.

Ministers claim that there is tremendous and pressing urgency, but if that is the case why did the Government forgo the opportunity to use Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 March for debates and divisions on the Bill? Could it be because they needed extra time to scramble high and low for an airline that wanted to be associated with this unworkable, unaffordable and unlawful scheme? Or could it be because the Home Secretary is unable to decide who should be exempted from deportation to Rwanda? Indeed, it has been reported that, because of his dithering, the entire hare-brained scheme has been given a “red risk” rating in the Home Office.

That brings me to the permanent secretary’s comments at the Public Accounts Committee on Monday—namely that 40,000 asylum seekers are currently stuck in the truly Kafkaesque perma-backlog of inadmissible cases whose claims for asylum the Government are refusing to process. Forty thousand requires an awful lot of flights, given that the Government have not managed to get one flight off the ground and given what we know about the Rwandan Government’s capacity to process just a few hundred cases a year.

Therefore, given that a maximum of around 1% of the asylum seekers who are in the perma-backlog can be sent to Rwanda, what is the Minister’s plan for the remaining 99% who are stuck in this indefinite limbo of his Government’s own making? Is the plan to keep them in taxpayer-funded hotels, of which hundreds are still in operation, according to what the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border said on Monday, despite the Government’s boasts? Or, perhaps they will have an amnesty, which the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) warned about last year, and which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) warned about at that very Committee.

Well, we know what we would do: we would deliver our backlog clearance plan, surging the number of decision-makers to process claims quickly, and set up our new returns and enforcement unit with 1,000 new staff to remove those who have no right to be here.

It is quite frankly shocking that the number of foreign criminals removed has dropped by a staggering 27 % under the Conservatives, and also profoundly worrying that the number of failed asylum seekers being returned has plummeted by 44 % in that time, with just 2%—2%!—of small boat crossers removed since 2018. What a sorry state of affairs.

Our new returns unit, together with our cross-border police units to go after the criminal smuggler gangs operating in the channel upstream—funded, of course, through redirecting the money that has been squandered on Rwanda—gives us a compelling and realistic plan. It is a plan that is based on hard graft, common sense and effective international co-operation, in stark contrast with the headline-chasing gimmicks, empty gestures and blank cheques that have come to define the way in which successive Conservative Governments have broken our asylum system and lost control of our borders.

The Government’s refusal to engage constructively with the other place on this Bill is deeply disappointing, given that their lordships have simply been fulfilling their constitutional duty to revise and improve the draft legislation that we convey to them. The noble Baroness Butler-Sloss received a tiny concession for her commendable attempts to stop the Government sending victims of modern slavery to Rwanda, but let us be clear: that concession was barely worth the paper that it was written on.

It is utterly shameful that Ministers are still refusing to accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord Browne. We owe a debt of honour and gratitude to the Afghans who so bravely fought alongside British troops, and the idea that we might send them to Rwanda is simply unconscionable. Lord Browne’s amendment is not only driven by a moral imperative; it is underpinned by our national interest and by military logic, for the simple and obvious reason that the ability of our armed forces to recruit local allies will be severely constrained if this Bill passes unamended.

Let me turn now to the other amendments before us today. It cannot be repeated often enough that adherence to the rule of law must remain at the heart of our constitutional conventions, and as a cornerstone of our liberal democratic values. It is therefore profoundly concerning that Ministers continue to refuse to recognise how important it is for Britain to abide by these principles, and to have this commitment in the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Tomlinson and Stephen Kinnock

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Under successive Conservative Governments since 2010, returns of failed asylum seekers have collapsed by 44%, and returns of foreign national offenders have fallen by almost 30% over the same period. For all the Government’s tough talk, only 2% of those arriving on small boats since 2018 have been returned anywhere, yet Ministers are still resisting Labour’s plan for a new returns and enforcement unit to ensure the swift removal of those with no right to be here. Meanwhile, over the weekend, more people crossed the channel in small boats than will be covered in the entire first year of the Government’s failing Rwanda scheme. Will the Minister stop the headline-chasing gimmicks and instead commit to setting out his plan for the 99% of people currently stuck in the asylum system who will never be sent to Rwanda?

[Michael Tomlinson]

The fact of the matter is that nearly 18,000 foreign national offenders were returned between January 2019 and December 2023. The fact of the matter is that Opposition Members, including the leader of the Labour party, have campaigned to prevent the deportation of foreign criminals, while Government Members welcome an increase of 74%, with an average of 500 people being removed every single week.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Michael Tomlinson and Stephen Kinnock

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

As I said in response to a previous intervention, they are being stood up in relation to the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which was taken through by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark, in anticipation of the work that will need to be done—that is sensible governance, dare I say it. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) is right to take me back to individual claims, which I will now turn to in the few minutes I have left.

The legislation provides that a court may grant interim relief only where there is

“a real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm”.

There must be credible evidence of that; there cannot simply be a bare assertion. Clause 4(5) cites the Illegal Migration Act, which my right hon. Friends took through last summer. It is worth pointing out that section 39 of that Act sets out an extremely narrow range of circumstances in which an individual claim can be made. I encourage right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Committee to look at section 39 of that Act and just how high the threshold for serious and irreversible harm is set.

Let me turn briefly to new clause 6, which was tabled by Opposition Members. I was intrigued to hear the shadow Minister state that the purpose of the new clause is to invite further legal challenge. That seems to be Labour’s plan—to invite further legal challenge. That is the purpose of new clause 6, and it is the exact opposite of the purpose of Conservative Members. We want this to work.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Minister is simply misrepresenting the purpose of new clause 6. Its purpose is to put the monitoring committee on a statutory footing so that it can potentially be subject to our domestic courts. I do not know whether he thinks that our domestic courts should be lower down the pecking order than the courts of Rwanda.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for his intervention. When he was setting the policy out in his opening remarks, he said that it would invite further legal challenges. Those of us on the Conservative Benches want to shut out legal challenges; those on the Opposition Benches want to encourage further legal challenges.

The Government have delivered a plan for immigration that will work. It builds upon the excellent work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—the champion of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—and of my predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham, who worked incredibly hard to deliver the long-awaited Illegal Migration Act, the toughest piece of immigration legislation until the Bill before us.

Just look at Albania. Our successful deal with Albania, which started with small numbers, has now removed nearly 6,000 people with no right to be here. We know that deterrence has worked because small boat arrivals from Albania are down by 94%. Legal challenges have not successfully stopped the flights to Albania. Those flights have not been stopped; in fact, not a single case of Albanian small boat arrivals has reached a substantive hearing at the upper tribunal in the past year.

We on the Conservative side of the Committee are united in our determination to ensure that the Bill works. As drafted, it creates an ever-tighter test than for illegal migrants facing removals to Albania. Our Rwanda Bill is tougher, tighter and goes further. We have a plan to stop the boats, and I invite hon. Members to back it.