Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

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

[Mr Roberts]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I am curious, and it is possibly my procedural unawareness that leads me to ask this question, but if this Bill is voted down tomorrow evening on Third Reading, is it not the case that we will not be able to bring anything else back within this Parliament, on the basis that we cannot ask the same question twice if it has already been negatived? He said that it is not an ideal Bill, it is flawed and its success is 50:50 at best, but if he votes it down, there is surely a zero per cent. chance of anything happening.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind Members that when intervening they should please look forward, so that their voice, mellifluous as it may be, can be picked up and the Hansard reporters can get the words down accurately.

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is possible to bring back a Bill on this issue, providing there is a substantial difference in what is brought forward from what we are debating. I would argue that a Bill that was not focused, as this one is, on the general safety of Rwanda, but on the wider enforceability of our immigration law could be brought forward in this Session.

It was a regrettable farce—I use the word advisedly—in the previous Parliament of which I was a Member that the overt bias of the then Speaker, Mr Bercow, meant that we were frustrated when we attempted to deal with this issue in the context of Brexit. If the Government do not support amendments to the Bill—I hope they will—I do not anticipate that situation arising in what would be the happy event of their coming forward with a new Bill that goes further on these points so that they can command the support of the whole of the Conservative party.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

After Miriam Cates, Matt Warman will be the last Back-Bench speaker. The wind-ups will begin after he sits down.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson). She made a fantastic speech and got to grips with the heart of the issue.

I rise to speak in support of the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). In particular, I want to speak to amendments 19 to 22 to clause 4, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark. Taken together, they will prevent individual migrants blocking their removal to Rwanda by using the UK courts to make claims over months and even years. The Bill already blocks claims relating to the general safety of Rwanda in particular, but it does not stop individual challenges like those that stopped the flight in June 2022, which ended up with the case that went to the Supreme Court last year.

As drafted, the Bill states that for an individual to avoid deportation, there must be compelling evidence that they would come to serious and irreversible harm if deported to Rwanda. That sounds like a very high bar, but in reality all that would be required is a doctor’s certificate certifying mental health problems if they were taken to Rwanda. Indeed, that is what happened in June 2022 to a couple of dozen people sitting on the flight on the tarmac. Nothing in the Bill materially changes that fact in terms of individual claims.

Even if claims are eventually not accepted, they still clog up the courts. They can still end up on appeal and, as we have heard, that can be for a matter of years. The Government said last night that they will increase, I think by about 150, the number of judges on the tribunals. All that shows is that the Government expect a large number of individual claims. If the Bill, as drafted, blocks individual claims as the Government suggest, why would they need additional judges to move through the courts? The questions raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), about where the judges would come from and what impact that would have on our wider courts system, are very valid.

If individual claims clog up the courts for months or even years, then even if they are not ultimately successful they will automatically weaken the deterrent effect of the Bill. The whole purpose of the Rwanda plan is to be a deterrent, and deterrents only work if the same action is always followed by a consistent response. It is the same with the criminal justice system and the same with parenting. Effective deterrents are by definition fair, because they treat everybody equally. Some of those opposing the amendments are normally highly in favour of equality. The amendments make it equal: everybody who arrives here illegally will be detained and deported. That is how we create an effective deterrent.

I readily admit that the Government have made progress and I warmly welcome all the progress that has been made: the deal with Albania, the upstream work with Bulgaria, and the attempts to help the French prevent more boats from launching in the first place. But to actually stop the boats, which is the Prime Minister’s pledge and the pledge we as a party have made to our constituents, migrants in Calais and the international criminal gangs must know beyond doubt that anyone arriving illegally in the UK will swiftly be detained and deported.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East is absolutely right; criminal gangs and migrants have smartphones. They can tell instantly which routes are available, where the boats are, how much they have to pay, what different countries’ asylum systems look like and what different countries’ benefit systems look like. They have an instant trade in information. A deterrent can only work if everyone knows beyond doubt that that is exactly what will happen to everyone who lands on our shores.

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[Miriam Cates]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who of course is right. One of the many solutions to this problem is to improve conditions in some of the countries from which people are fleeing, but we also have to be realistic. We cannot solve all the problems in the world. We are speaking about illegal migration, but there are also ethical issues with legal migration. Taking large numbers of well-trained, well-educated young people from developing countries into our NHS and our workforce is not helping the countries that they are leaving. The ethics of the whole immigration debate need careful scrutiny in both directions.

I shall come back to my point. Yes, we should be compassionate and yes, we need well-managed schemes for taking refugees, but it is not the responsibility of the British Government to rehouse everybody in the world who would like to come here. That does not mean that we do not have sympathy for the plight of individuals, but the definition of responsibility and accountability matters, and our responsibility is first and foremost to our constituents and the welfare of those in the UK.

I support these amendments and I will be voting for them tonight because the Bill must work. It must work to provide an effective deterrent; it must work to secure our borders; it must work to prevent people smuggling; and it must work to show the British people that their elected representatives really do take their concerns seriously.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

After Matt Warman we will have the ministerial response, then Alison Thewliss will make references to her amendment, and then we are expecting multiple votes.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I want to begin by talking about the remarkable contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), to whose amendment I wish to speak. In a constituency such as mine, which voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, the work that he has done over many decades is appreciated, and it is something that has served the national interest, so I am somewhat nervous about criticising amendment 10. None the less, I know that he and I, more than anything else, can disagree courteously, which is perhaps more than I and many others have managed with some Brexiteers who have perhaps got too much credit for a project that has now run its course.

I could talk a little about why I worry that a Bill that is already judged to have a 50:50 chance of success could, in the pursuit of toughening it up, be driven to having a far lesser chance of success. The people who say that they want it to work, and to work quickly, in fact run the risk of driving it into the courts, seeing it fail and seeing us as a party take less of the action that is so clearly in the national interest.