Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Simon Clarke Excerpts

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

[Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow a contribution that was slightly more rational than those we have heard from a number of Members on the Conservative Benches during today’s debate. This is my first Committee of the whole House, and it has been an interesting experience. We have had 17th-century constitutional and political lectures, analysis of the US constitution and, really interestingly, the suggestion from a number of Conservative Members—which slightly lets the cat out of the bag—that this policy is all about the upcoming general election and how quickly we can get flights off the ground before that happens. We have heard very little about whether the Bill actually contributes to an effective immigration strategy.

I rise to speak in support of new clause 6. I have spoken in various other debates on this legislation and outlined my objections. It is a fundamentally ridiculous proposition that is becoming increasingly ridiculous as we see the Tory psychodrama playing out in front of us—slightly less dramatic this time than it was in December, but I am sure that will change—and pulling the Bill in two completely opposing directions while the Government still claim that it is an entirely workable policy. It has the dubious distinction of being a policy that is both utterly immoral and completely ineffective, at the same time as costing an extraordinary amount of money. It is seemingly not even supported by the Prime Minister, yet here we are, debating amendments that will take the Bill even closer to breaching international law—if it does not already—and further diminish Britain’s standing in the world. The Bill should be voted down on Third Reading, and from the looks of the Tory chaos it might well be, but for now we have an opportunity to try to make it a little better with some safeguards.

In my view, new clause 6 should be completely uncontroversial. If the Government genuinely believe that Rwanda is a safe country—if they believe it is able to meet all the expectations placed on it in the Rwanda treaty—why should there be any hesitation at all about putting the monitoring committee on a statutory footing? That would ensure that Rwanda’s status as a safe country can be suspended if the facts change—if we uncover additional evidence that perhaps it is not a safe country, if the political situation changes, or if the Foreign Office changes its travel guidance. Surely those are basic things that would lead us to question the safety of Rwanda.

It is on that evidence base that I will focus my remarks. As has been discussed, clause 2 of the Bill is an attempt to replace facts with legally binding fiction. The Bill might be said to legislate for a lie—to make something that is not true on the evidence we have seen true in the eyes of the legal establishment. It was Orwell who wrote:

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it…the very existence of external reality…was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”

We are in that situation now: “Forget the evidence to the contrary. Just take our word for it: this is fact.” Through new clause 6, we have an opportunity to ensure that if evidence of human rights abuses or the mistreatment of migrants were to emerge, there is a mechanism to suspend the Government’s alternative truth and make legal decisions in our courts on the basis of reality.

It is risible that this is even debatable. Given the security situation near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, which the Foreign Office, in its own international travel guidance today, says makes Rwanda “unstable”, is it not a sensible precaution to introduce a protection saying that if the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office were to advise against travel to Rwanda, the statement that Rwanda is a safe country for migrants should be suspended? Otherwise, we have a Bill that the Government seek to make into law that simply says that in perpetuity, no matter what, Rwanda is a safe country.

The 137 pages of the Home Office’s information note on human rights, which it published this week, make for interesting reading. I spent some time reading all 137 pages, and I encourage Members to do so, although I wonder how many have. In some ways, when I was reading it, I was surprised that the Government had actually put it on their website, given the litany of evidence it presents on why Rwanda cannot in all seriousness be declared a safe country. It details examples of the state prosecuting political opponents, deaths in police custody, unofficial detention facilities, police torture, ill treatment and torture in custody, the recruitment of child soldiers as recently as last year, and countless other breaches of human rights law. It also covers the questionable strength of Rwandan Government institutions to challenge those breaches, so I do wonder whether the Government have read their own evidence pack.

To add to that, this week the UNHCR has provided further evidence, updated just yesterday, that the UK-Rwanda scheme does not meet the required standards relating to the legality and appropriateness of the transfer of asylum seekers. It states that the scheme is therefore

“not compatible with the international refugee law.”

It cites numerous concerns about fair and efficient procedures in Rwanda for handling asylum applications and the continued risks of refoulement, and it concludes that this

“undermines the universality of human rights, has implications for the rule of law both domestically and internationally, and sets an acutely troubling precedent.”

The evidence is clear on the Government’s own website that Rwanda cannot be defined as a safe country, but even if we were to accept that it is a safe country, surely new clause 6 gives scope in the future should circumstances change—even if it is the Government who decide that—to suspend the idea that it is a safe country and allow the courts to make their own decisions.

Although voting down this entire Bill on Third Reading is the right course of action, we should at least try to do what we can to make it slightly more sensible—to oppose some of the amendments tabled by Conservative Members that would take us even further towards breaching our international obligations, and to support amendments that seek to make it slightly more sensible. New clause 6 is a sensible amendment that I would encourage Members to vote for.

This Bill must be defeated and the policy it seeks to enact must be abandoned. It is hugely costly and it is ineffective. With the news this week that, as Members have said, five more people have been tragically killed in the freezing cold waters of the channel trying to make their way to this country, it is time to move beyond these gimmicks and the appeasement of the extremes in the Conservative party and to deliver some workable policies.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I rise to speak in support of the amendments standing in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who I believe has shown considerable political and personal courage during the course of this legislation to date.

I want to open my remarks by saying how strongly I believe in the principles of the Rwanda scheme. It is imperative that we break the business model of the people smugglers in a way that means the trade is not merely dented but ceases. We have heard platitudes, I fear, from Opposition Members about how if only we worked a bit more closely with the European law enforcement agencies, everything would resolve itself. Of course, would that that was so.

I can testify not only from my own time in Government but from having spoken to Ministers in the Home Office both currently and previously that a litany of work is under way to make sure that we bear down on this evil trade, and it has had some success. Crossings are down by approximately a third on their peak in 2022, and there has been enforcement action ranging from the French coast right through to dinghy sales in Bulgaria, which testifies to the fact that the UK is working at pace with our partner agencies to try to end these crossings. However, unless we address the root causes, we will always be left dealing with the consequences of the problem. That, I am afraid, is not acceptable to me and, much more importantly, it is not acceptable to my constituents or to the people of this country.

Just this weekend we had, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks) said, a tragic reminder of the human cost of allowing this trade to persist. Clearly it also has serious consequences for the United Kingdom. It makes a mockery of our border security and damages social cohesion. The accommodation costs alone of our asylum seeker population are somewhere in the region of £8 million a day, and that is before the through-life costs of these people being in this country. It also compromises our security, as the awful murder in Hartlepool a few months ago made clear. We do not know—we cannot know—who is coming into this country, and that is a serious and substantial risk that it is incumbent on us to acknowledge.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark alluded to, the test that faces us as legislators is simple: will this legislation work? It is not, “Is this legislation the strongest ever?”, although for the record it is, but it is still likely to prove insufficient. Still less is the test, “Is this as far as the Prime Minister is willing to go?” There is a crisis of faith in our politics. That boils down, as it has done for a number of years, spanning the Brexit debate and the causes of that, to whether we as Members of Parliament mean what we say. Is our word worth anything? Are we capable as a country of asserting our national sovereignty? Are we as a country capable of policing our borders?

I welcome the fact that the Government have decided that we now need to derogate from parts of the Human Rights Act 1998, which is welcome, brave and commendable. We now need to follow that logic to its conclusion. As amendment 10, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, sets out, we should set out clearly and unambiguously that this Act will have effect notwithstanding the Human Rights Act. We must also close the loopholes that regrettably remain in the legislation. We have proposals to do so, with an accompanying legal opinion from John Larkin KC, the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark set out eloquently a few hours ago, we must in particular strengthen provisions against individual claims, as opposed to the general principle of the safety of Rwanda. It is welcome that we are asserting that, but it will be critically undermined unless we can stop the profusion of individual claims that will materialise, not least with the help, I am afraid, of the creative legal fraternity, if we do not close off that route.

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Roberts) said a few minutes ago, we are not excluding appeal rights entirely. If, for example, someone is seriously ill, they will not be eligible for removal to Rwanda under the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. However, we must make it clear that we will not tolerate the abuses—and they are abuses—that we witness day in, day out under the current system.

We must also make clear in the Bill that rule 39 interim injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg will not have automatic binding effect. That is something that I think many of us regarded as a settled issue. Anyone who watched the Prime Minister’s appearance on the Kuenssberg show on the BBC just 10 days ago will have seen that he was unable to offer that guarantee. He was unable to offer it in good conscience, because here we enter the contested territory of what the Attorney General is prepared to sign off and what the ministerial code will allow. That goes to show precisely why the issue is so pressing. If we do not assert it as a sovereign Parliament in the Bill, it is highly likely that the issue will rear its head again in the months ahead.

Failure to close the loopholes will mean that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark said, we will face pressing operational problems that will significantly impair, and perhaps totally frustrate, our ability to pursue what this side of the Committee wishes to deliver. Our court system will be overwhelmed, our detained estate for asylum seekers will be overwhelmed, and the public’s patience will be exhausted. We have marched the British public up this hill not once, but twice already and failed both times. This is our third attempt. The Government’s own estimate, as we know, is that as we stand today, the Bill’s best chance of success can be rated at around 50:50. That is simply not adequate.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mr Roberts]

rose—

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I will not give way further on this point. We are clearly keen as a Conservative party to deliver on this problem in a way that will satisfy the British public.

The Prime Minister has said that he will do “whatever it takes”. Unfortunately, I do not believe that, as of this moment, we are set to do whatever it takes to stop the problem. I can vote for this legislation only if I believe genuinely and sincerely that it will resolve the problem and I can look my constituents—the people who send me here—in the eye and say, “This is going to fix it”, because I have done so twice before and let them down. I urge my colleagues to reflect carefully on that.

The Prime Minister has confirmed that the general election is likely to be held in the latter half of this year. I am afraid that, by that time, there will have been contact between this Bill and the reality of our court system, and I do not think the outcome will be a pretty one. There will have been time for it to be tested and, I fear, for it to fail. At best, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark observed, we are likely to see a few token flights setting off—not the automatic deterrent that will be required to change the incentives. The expectation for a young male who is in essence an economic migrant in all but name seeking a better life in the UK needs to be that he will be detained and removed. That, and that alone, is what will change the incentives driving this trade. That is not what is set to be delivered by the Bill.

In the absence of amendments being brought forward and supported by the Government, I will not be able to support the Bill. More than that, I will vote against it on Third Reading. I say that with real sadness but with total determination that we as a Conservative party should show that we are honest with the British people about the nature of the crisis we face, and that we are determined to do everything in our power to resolve it. Short of that, this legislation cannot have my support.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). Those of us in this place who are not learned Members have had interesting conversations in the past weeks and months with learned colleagues on both sides of the argument on the Bill. Some want it toughened and some want it slightly softened, but all of us are united in wanting a Bill that works and allows the Prime Minister to deliver on his promise.

I absolutely trust the Prime Minister’s commitment to ensuring that we can stop the boats. I believe that the Rwanda policy can be a deterrent to people. If their expectation is that they will not succeed and they do not have a right to remain in the United Kingdom, they will not pay their money to a person who promises they can succeed. I am grateful to my learned colleagues for putting forward their opinions. If that has shown me anything, it is that lawyers like to talk and argue, and it is in their interests to do so, so we cannot pass a Bill that enables lawyers to bat cases around indefinitely and allow appeals to be lodged—enough to make the policy ineffective.

My constituents find it ludicrous that they elect Members to come to this place and act in their interests, yet we do not seem to be able to do that. I think the small boats trade is raised with me on the doorstep more than any other issue. It is an evil practice on so many levels. These are people making money from others’ misery, and they are putting lives at risk. As I have said before, it is perverse, because a fair and just asylum system should not be reliant on a person’s ability to scramble thousands of miles—across a continent—and to pay people smugglers. It is absurd to any rational person.