Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Natalie Elphicke and Diana Johnson

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am going to carry on. The hon. Gentleman spoke at length, and I want to get through a number of amendments.

I turn to amendments 2 and 3, which also relate to the treaty. In the other place, Lord Hope argued that Rwanda being declared a safe country should be dependent on the arrangements provided for in the treaty being “fully implemented” and “adhered to in practice”, with amendment 3 setting out what that would actually look like and giving the independent monitoring committee a significant role in reporting on this. In response, the Minister in the Lords set out that the Government would ratify the treaty only

“once we agree with Rwanda that all necessary implementation is in place”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1358.]

As we know, the Bill will come into force only once the treaty has been ratified. Again, it would have been helpful and beneficial for this House to have had the opportunity to debate the treaty, yet scrutiny of its provisions did not happen in the Commons, just as financial details of the UK-Rwanda partnership had been held back from Parliament until very recently. As highlighted in last week’s estimates day debate on asylum and migration, the Home Office repeatedly refused the Home Affairs Committee’s requests for basic financial information about the scheme, and disclosed some of the costs only after our Committee joined forces with the Public Accounts Committee to request a National Audit Office investigation.

We now know that the core costs are very expensive: £370 million for the economic transformation and integration fund, an additional £20,000 per individual relocated, a further £120 million once 300 people have been relocated and, on top of all that, £150,874 for each individual relocated to Rwanda. There is a direct cost to the Home Office of £28 million by the end of 2023-24, with £1 million per year in staff costs and £11,000 for the flight cost of each individual relocated, and I still do not know whether the Home Office has been able to enter into a contract with an airline to deliver the removals to Rwanda. Crucially, though, we still have not been told the costs for implementing the provisions in the treaty, such as a new asylum appeals body. Is there money available, and has it been allocated to pay for that?

We already know that the Home Office budget is under acute pressure. On 1 February this year, the Home Secretary requested an emergency drawdown of £2.6 billion from the reserves, because the Department had run out of money before the supplementary estimates had been approved. With serious questions still to answer about how the Government will fund the implementation of the treaty, and about its practical implementation, I believe that the amendments help to provide some necessary assurances that the Government have hitherto failed to provide to Parliament.

Amendments 4 and 5 would make it possible to argue that Rwanda is not a safe country on the presentation of “credible evidence to the contrary” and would allow appeals to be brought on that basis. Responding on behalf of the Government, the Minister in the Lords said:

“We have been clear that the purpose of this legislation is to stop the boats, and to do that we must create a deterrent that shows that, if you enter the UK illegally, you will not be able to stay.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1378.]

The Home Affairs Committee has repeatedly asked both Ministers and senior officials what evidence there is for the deterrent effect of the Rwanda scheme. The permanent secretary, Sir Matthew Rycroft, required a ministerial direction for the scheme, because there was no evidence that it would provide value for money. When he gave evidence before the Committee last year, he said that this was because

“the value-for-money judgment depends on the amount of deterrence that the policy will produce.”

He noted that although the number of people crossing the channel is falling, it

“is very hard to tell how much of that is the possibility of being relocated to Rwanda, particularly, as you suggest, before the first flights to Rwanda have taken off.”

The truth is that we actually do not have any idea whether the policy that this Bill facilitates will have the deterrent effect that the Minister cites. As I highlighted in Committee of the whole House, it does not seem sensible for the Government to propose that the status of Rwanda as a safe country should be fixed for ever more, which would, by extension, make Rwanda the only country on Earth in which nothing ever happens or changes. Amendments enabling the presentation of evidence relating to those changes and their implications for safety in Rwanda therefore seem eminently reasonable and, indeed, necessary.

Amendment 6 deletes clause 4 and introduces into the Bill a new clause that allows much wider grounds for legal challenge. The Home Affairs Select Committee has always recognised that appropriate legal challenge is a necessary part of any functioning asylum system. Amendment 7 disapplies section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, meaning that people claiming to be children could appeal against a decision that they are over 18. The noble Baroness Lister, who tabled that amendment, explained that it was intended to

“minimise the risk of any unaccompanied child being sent to Rwanda”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1577.]

During the Home Affairs Committee’s channel crossings inquiry, we heard multiple examples of safeguarding processes failing across various parts of the asylum system, including cases of children being mistaken for adults. Section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act refers to the process of age assessment in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The Committee’s channel crossings report noted that that Act contains a number of provisions relating to age assessment, including a new national age assessment board and powers for the Home Secretary to make regulations specifying scientific methods for age assessments. Our report notes:

“The provisions are controversial because there is broad consensus that age assessment should not rely exclusively, or for some stakeholders, at all, on analyses of the skeleton or the teeth.”

I am concerned that without the amendment tabled by Baroness Lister, the Bill could produce a situation where a child is wrongly assessed as being an adult and sent to Rwanda.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am going to carry on, because I want other Members to be able to speak.

Amendment 8 relates to the timetable for removals under the Illegal Migration Act. It would require the Home Secretary to lay before Parliament a statement setting out all the individuals whose asylum claims have been deemed inadmissible since that Act received Royal Assent. The statement would have to include the number of individuals due to be removed to Rwanda and the timetable for those removals, as well as the arrangements for those individuals not being removed to Rwanda.

Again, that is information that the Home Affairs Committee has already tried to glean from the Home Office. Indeed, when the Home Secretary appeared before the Committee in January, I asked him how many individuals whose asylum claims had been deemed inadmissible since the Illegal Migration Act received Royal Assent would be sent to Rwanda. He replied:

“That will depend on which other countries we have returns agreements with.”

Despite pressing him several times on that point, our attempts to ascertain any further information were unsuccessful. As the noble Lord Coaker said when moving his amendment, this is a subject on which it would be good to have some facts. That is why his amendment has significant merit.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The hon. Lady is trying to get in, so I will give way, but I am keen to finish.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I am grateful to her for giving way, because I was hoping to intervene on the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), on a similar point.

When it comes to facts, I am concerned that those being presented are slightly selective, particularly in relation to age assessment. In the House of Lords, the evidence that was brought before their lordships was that—as the right hon. Lady knows—the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee, the expert committee that is independent and has been set up independently, has proposed that the accuracy of age assessment will be improved in multiple ways: not just using one biological method, but a range of methods alongside the existing one. I am concerned that partial evidence about age assessment is being presented in today’s debate, and I would be very grateful for the right hon. Lady’s confirmation that she supports the inclusion of those important methods of age assessment that the committee has recommended, in order to support accurate age assessment for safeguarding children.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Very briefly, I am reporting what the cross-party Home Affairs Committee decided and put in our report on cross-channel small boat crossings. We produced that report nearly two years ago—this matter has been going on for some time. I am reporting our concerns, which are widely shared among all members of the Committee, about the problems that exist. It is very difficult to assess the correct age of a person who claims to be a child, so it is worth reflecting that this is not easy, and the Home Affairs Committee is mindful and concerned about it.