Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

It was not just one refugee; many refugees are taken from Rwanda by this country, which begs the question how safe Rwanda can be. All that the amendment would do is trust but verify. It would put in place the kind of mechanism that is embedded in thousands of pieces of legislation that are on the statute book. I simply cannot understand why the Government cannot simply accept the amendment and enable the Home Secretary to lay a statement on whether Rwanda is safe or unsafe. That would provide important safeguards. It is not in any way a wrecking amendment; just like all the other amendments that the Government rejected, it would not prevent flights from taking off.

At his press conference this morning, the Prime Minister boasted about the progress that he has supposedly been making to stop the Tory small boats chaos. Yet as he stood at the lectern, it emerged that small boat crossings have increased by 24% compared with the same period last year. Next, he refused to give details about the operationalisation of the Rwanda scheme, saying that

“we will not be giving away sensitive operational detail which could hinder all the progress made to date”—

or so he thought. It subsequently emerged that one of his Ministers had left behind under some chairs in the front row a secret document entitled “Official Sensitive”, which included—wait for it—operational details of how the scheme will work. You simply could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yet another day of chaos, empty boasts, and shambolic incompetence.

To be fair to the Prime Minister, he made one point in his press conference that Labour did agree with. In response to a question from the media, he clearly stated that the test for the policy will not be whether a few “symbolic flights” take off, as his former friend the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), the former Immigration Minister, said. In the Prime Minister’s words:

“Success is when the boats have been stopped.”

That is how he wants to be judged, and I assure the House that it is how Labour will judge him, and how the public will judge him too.

For two years, we have been urging the Prime Minister to stop the boasts and instead start stopping the Tory boats chaos. Sadly, he has chosen to ignore us on both fronts. Instead, we need Labour’s plan—[Interruption.]—to redirect the Rwanda money into a cross-border police unit to smash the criminal gangs upstream, and a returns and enforcement unit to remove those who have no right to be here, reversing the decline in removals that we have seen under this Government. Only Labour’s plan can fix our country’s broken asylum system—[Interruption.]—and only Labour’s plan can restore order at our border. [Interruption.] Conservative Members do not want to hear it, but that is the reality of the situation. I hope that every Conservative Member will join me in the Division Lobby this evening.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

It was going so well, and then it descended into a Second Reading diatribe from a Labour Opposition that have absolutely nothing to say about the serious challenge of immigration. They pretend that they will do what the Government are doing, only slightly better, but they do not really approach the level of events and the seriousness of the issue. We face a blank page on the other side of the House.

Let us deal briefly with the issue that we have left. I still think that there is strong merit in what their lordships say about not just the way in which we designate Rwanda to be a safe country but the parliamentary mechanism that we have to deal with things changing in the future, if they do. It seems to me that in the absence of the amendment there would be the need for further primary legislation in the future, which I do not think is a great place for the Government to end up in. However, in the context of where we are in the detailed consideration of Lords amendments, there comes a time when the unelected House has to cede authority to the elected House. I think we are now approaching that moment.

While I in no way resile from the merits of the argument, we need to look at the bigger picture, remember the balance that we have to strike and, frankly, think ahead to what future Governments there might end up being—hopefully not of a different complexion to our own. We need to strike a balance between both Houses. I judge that now is probably the time for us to—

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

It is for the simple reason that we want to put in the Bill an articulation of what has already been said by Ministers from the Dispatch Box. We feel that it is extremely important to underline this country’s commitment to the rule of law. The hon. Gentleman mentions the Leader of the Opposition; as an eminent lawyer himself, there are few who are more committed to the rule of law than he.

If there is a parallel universe in which the Rwandan Government are able to process asylum claims in a safe and competent manner, surely it makes sense to verify that point and the measures that are set out in the Rwanda treaty, and to verify that they have been fully implemented, and for the Government’s hand-picked monitoring committee to establish that that is the case. That is not an unreasonable request from the noble Lord Hope, and the Government should therefore support his amendment, precisely as the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who is no longer in his place, pointed out.

The British people are looking on at this Government’s attempts to continue flogging this dead horse of a Bill—that seems to have become the metaphor of the day—with a growing sense of bemusement and anger. Blowing half a million pounds of taxpayers’ money on sending 300 people to Rwanda is utterly mind-boggling. It is equally staggering that £2 million will be spent per asylum seeker to send them to Rwanda. We could surely spend £2 million more effectively on sending the Prime Minister and his four predecessors on a one-way trip to outer space with Virgin Galactic.

Perhaps the right thing to do would be for the Government to drop this entire failing fiasco and instead adopt Labour’s detailed plan to repurpose the Rwanda money into smashing the criminal smuggler gangs and ending the Tory small boats chaos. We know what the Bill is really about; the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), admitted it in December. It is all about the Prime Minister getting “a few symbolic flights” off the ground before the general election. This weekend, a civil servant confirmed to Lizzie Dearden in the i newspaper that efforts are geared towards a single flight as “proof of concept”, calling it an “election vanity scam”.

That really tells us everything that we need to know. None of this is about dealing with the chaos that the Government have created; they have focused on getting a couple of symbolic flights off the ground. It lets the cat well and truly out of the bag. Everyone can see the Rwanda scheme for what it really is, everyone can see the legislation for what it really is, and everybody can see this Government for what they are. I think we need a new one, and so too do the British people.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Bearing in mind the short time, I will do my best to speak briefly. We have four amendments from the Lords. I can deal with them in short order. Amendment 1D has no merit. I have not voted on that particular issue before, but today I will vote against it, because we cannot perfect that mess of a clause—clause 1. I will not repeat the arguments that I have made on that, and I really do not think that the amendment improves the clause with the addition of various statutes, as the Minister said. I think that we should reject the amendment.

I agree that amendment 6D is a wrecking amendment. We know that the delineation of clause 4 specifically with individual cases was a proper and right addition to the Bill from the outset, which I think makes it compliant with the rule of law. Therefore the amendment should be rejected. I will not repeat my arguments on amendment 10D. I still think that there is a class of people who served this country, and bravely exposed themselves to danger, who have not yet been dealt with. Many of them are in Pakistan. It would perhaps have been helpful to see an amendment in lieu to deal with that point, as the Minister did with regard to modern-day slavery, for which I thank him.

I was pleased to hear the detailed reference that the Minister made to the progress being made by the Government of Rwanda to implement the provisions under the treaty. That is clearly the issue at the heart of amendment 3E and clause 2. He knows my concern about deeming provisions and the desirability of their meeting the reality of the situation, which is why I welcome his statement, and the statement of the noble Lord, the Advocate-General in the other place, that the Bill will not come into force until the treaty has been implemented.

I think the Minister conceded that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord Hope is not a wrecking amendment; it is designed to ensure that there is a mechanism through which this place can deal with the fact that Rwanda is a safe country, and to ensure that if, God forbid, the situation ever deteriorated such that it was no longer a safe country, we would not need primary legislation to correct the situation. At the moment we would. The second proposed new subsection in amendment 3E would allow this place to be involved in a situation where Rwanda might no longer be a safe country, on the advice of the independent monitoring committee, which of course is a creature of the treaty itself, set up under the treaty, as the Minister described. It is not part of the Hope amendment to set up a new body. That is not the intention.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is just over two years to the day since the Rwanda scheme was first announced from the Government Dispatch Box, so it would be remiss of us not to take stock of progress to date. Well, hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money have been sent to the Rwandan Government; civil servants, courts, parliamentarians and journalists have spent countless hours, days and weeks discussing and writing about the scheme; and not one, not two, but three Home Secretaries have flown down to Kigali. But apart from that, there is not a great deal to report. The boats have kept coming, the backlog has kept growing, and the people smugglers are still laughing all the way to the bank. We have had two years of headline-chasing gimmicks; two years of pursuing a policy that is fundamentally unworkable, unaffordable and unlawful; two years of flogging this dead horse.

I am an inveterate optimist, so I truly believe that one day Government Members will come to understand that hard graft and common sense are always more effective than the sugar rush of a tabloid front page, and they will come to accept that they should have adopted Labour’s comprehensive plan to restore order to our border by redirecting the vast amounts of money set aside for the Rwandan Government into a new cross-border police unit, and a new security partnership with Europol to smash the criminal gangs upstream.

Analysis conducted by the National Audit Office has revealed that if the Government manage to send 300 asylum seekers to Rwanda, which is just 0.5% of the 60,000 people earmarked for the scheme, it will cost the British taxpayer a truly staggering £2m per person. It is crystal clear that the scheme is doomed to fail on its own terms because people who are prepared to risk life and limb crossing continents will not be deterred by a 0.5% chance of being sent to Rwanda.

The mind-boggling costs of the scheme are quite difficult to grasp, so I have done a bit of homework—a bit of research into what else we could get for £2 million. My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), who is not in his place, got the ball rolling during our last debate on the Bill by pointing out that £2 million will get someone five trips to outer space on the Virgin Galactic spacecraft—Madam Deputy Speaker, you look impressed, and suitably so. I have calculated that someone could live for three decades on one of the world’s most expensive cruise liners. They could charter, for a year, the Lady M yacht, which is, of course, the yacht that belongs to the “noble” Baroness Mone—it is her vessel of choice, as some Government Members may be aware—or they could even fly the Prime Minister’s favoured helicopter to Australia and back.

Speaking of the Prime Minister, I noticed that during the Easter recess, he found time to offer his services as a financial adviser to small businesses via Zoom. I do not know about you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have concerns about a guy who is happy to pump billions of pounds into a failing fiasco like this Rwanda scheme offering his services as a financial adviser to unsuspecting members of the public. Let us hope that the Financial Conduct Authority will intervene as a matter of urgency.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is proving most entertaining, but as this is consideration of Lords amendments, will he get on to dealing with the amendments? I want him to be in order!

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman is right, we have had this conversation before, and he consistently refuses to listen to the fact that the Dublin regulation acted as a deterrent, so the numbers that he talks about were small. The number of small boat crossings was small when we were part of the Dublin regulation. We left the Dublin regulation, and now the number is large—it is not rocket science. There is a clear connection, a correlation, a causal link between the two.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. The reason the small boats problem has grown exponentially is that we dealt with the lorries issue. We closed the loophole when it came to lorries and the channel tunnel in particular, and that is why people are now resorting to small boats. It is nothing to do with Dublin. Surely those are the facts.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I simply say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that last year, we had 45,000 people coming on small boats and goodness knows how many on lorries—of course, those coming by clandestine means in the back of a lorry are far more difficult to detect than those coming on small boats, so the small boats crisis is, by definition, far more visible. It is true that that juxtaposition and the new arrangements have had a positive impact, but we still do not know how many are coming. I have been to camps in Calais and spoken to many who are planning to come on lorries rather than on small boats—not least because it is a far cheaper alternative. The reality is that a very large number of people are coming to our country through irregular means, but it is also clear that that number was significantly smaller when we were part of the Dublin regulation. That is because it was a comprehensive deterrent, compared with the utterly insignificant power of the Rwanda programme as a deterrent.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Stephen Kinnock

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I mentioned earlier, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury has set out a clear and detailed blueprint for how we need to boost the institutional capacity, human resources capacity, financial capacity and firepower of the SFO. The blueprint is right there. I very much hope that the Government will look at it and perhaps even adopt it. Of course, if they do not, we will soon have a Labour Government who will.

The Opposition’s new clauses on victims intend to go much further than victims of economic crime in the UK alone. It is our hope—in government, it will be our intention—to work with our allies and partners internationally to provide robust mechanisms for the seizure of proceeds of corruption, kleptocracy and other crimes under international law, and to use such assets to provide funds for the reconstruction and other forms of financial redress to victims—in Ukraine, for instance—of the criminal acts of dictators such as Vladimir Putin.

For months, we have had nothing but warm words from the Government on such proposals. We know that there have been international discussions, including with our G7 partners and our allies in Ukraine, but we need more than warm words and vague promises of jam tomorrow. While Ministers stall on this issue, we are increasingly at risk of being left behind by our allies in the US, Canada and elsewhere, who are already taking the actions that we want to see in the UK. New clause 27 would therefore direct the Secretary of State to publish a strategy for using the proceeds of crime to compensate victims, and to do so within 90 days of the Bill receiving Royal Assent.

We welcome the Bill, but it is a great shame that the Government are failing to take more substantive action in the crucial areas that I mentioned. The Bill is a step in the right direction, but, as it stands, it lacks ambition and is therefore a missed opportunity. I hope that Conservative Members will support our amendments today, so that we can finally begin to clean up our country’s reputation as the go-to destination for dictators, oligarchs, kleptocrats and gangsters, and for their dirty money.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

This issue has been a concern of mine not just for months but for many years. Anybody who has even a passing acquaintance with the issue at hand will know that its history is somewhat tortuous. A series of options were set out comprehensively in a Law Commission report published in June last year, which I commend to hon. Members. However, there is much that predates that. Indeed, much that has happened in the last few months in this place—in both Houses—reinforces the thrust of the argument that I seek to advance by way of new clauses 4 to 6, which stand in my name and those of many other right hon. and hon. Members, from all parties in the House, to whom I am extremely grateful.

In 2015, my party’s manifesto rightly committed the Government to make it illegal for companies to fail to put in place measures to prevent economic crime. It would be unfair to say that nothing happened. We had the Criminal Finances Act 2017, which created a new offence of failing to prevent tax evasion. That was a development on the failing to prevent bribery offence contrary to section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010, which opened the door to the development of the principle across a range of criminality in this space.

Subsequent to that, the Ministry of Justice launched a call for evidence in early 2017 on corporate liability reform for economic crime. However, it is right to say that progress on that was exceedingly slow. It was not until November 2020, when I was serving as Secretary of State, that it was agreed across Government that the Law Commission would be given the task of examining the issue and producing a report. It was right to acknowledge at that stage that there were a number of potential models that could be deployed here, and it was important for an independent body such as the Law Commission to look at different jurisdictions, as of course it did. It looked in particular at the United States, Canada and Australia: common law jurisdictions that have long been wrestling with the same challenges that we face. To differing effect, they have brought in and deployed their own particular regimes. More on that slightly later.

What is clear is that there is very much consensus in this place on the need for reform of corporate criminal liability. The Treasury Committee’s report of February last year urged the Government

“to act quickly in bringing forward any legislation flowing from the Law Commission’s review.”

In June, the Foreign Affairs Committee talked about

“reform of outdated and ineffective corporate criminal liability laws”,

and, in October, the Justice Committee spoke in similar terms. Finally, a report from the House of Lords Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee in November said:

“Reform of corporate criminal liability will be essential in order to maximise the impact of the Fraud Act and other legal tools going forward…to hold corporates across all sectors to account and to inspire behaviour change.”