Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

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.

[Sir William Cash]

I simply want to put it to the hon. Gentleman that, as the rule of law includes the basis of sovereignty, it is quite clear—from one great jurist to another right the way down through the generations—that, where an Act of Parliament is clear and unambiguous in its wording, it is the duty of the courts, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister has just said with regard to Lord Reed’s judgment, to give effect to those words. That is the rule of law, not this confection that the hon. Gentleman is producing time and again. If I may say so, he has flogged this dead horse not just once, but many times, because he keeps on saying it. He has repeated himself now three times. I have never seen a dead horse flogged so badly as that by the hon. Gentleman.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Lectures about flogging dead horses in the context of a debate about Rwanda really is quite extraordinary, because if we wanted a definition of a dead horse, it is this policy. The hon. Gentleman and I have had many exchanges on this point and I have enjoyed them. As I have repeatedly said to him, yes Parliament is sovereign, but Parliament must act with due care and attention and caution with regard to the opinions that come from our most eminent court, the Supreme Court, and in this case the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Rwanda is not a safe country. It is a travesty that Parliament is seeking to undermine the rule of our judiciary in that way and it raises deeply troubling questions about this issue of the rule of law.

[John Redwood]

Where would the proposed returns unit send illegals to, and what if the countries concerned did not want to receive them?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am pleased the right hon. Gentleman has asked me that question, as we often get this point about returns from Conservative Members. What I find fascinating is that, when we look at, for example, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are clearly safe countries in principle, we see that 80% of the applicants from those countries whose asylum claims fail are not being removed by this Government. For instance, the Home Office rejected asylum applications from 1,750 Pakistanis in 2023, yet Home Office data shows that just 620 people were removed to Pakistan in 2023. A clear proportion of those would have been asylum seekers—some may well have been foreign national offenders. The key point is that there are many, many countries to which it is more than possible to return people, yet the Government are simply failing to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) asked an extraordinary question in Home Office orals on Monday about a foreign national offender in her constituency who has been convicted of a sexual offence and has asked to be returned to his country of origin, but the Home Office has not facilitated that or allowed it to happen. Clearly, there is something going seriously wrong with returns. As I have mentioned, we have seen the number of returned failed asylum seekers plummet by 44% since 2010. We should be focusing on those countries with low grant rates, because that is where we can clear some of this backlog and return people to their country of origin when they have no right to be here.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. I find it interesting that he has suggested that all we need to do is ask India for emergency travel documents and it will immediately issue them. Has he made any attempt to find out what the issues might be there?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The key point is that, under the last Labour Government, returns were working. A part of that, I suspect, is based on proper, adult, grown-ups in the room having proper, adult, grown-up diplomatic conversations with the Governments with whom we mean to engage. What we have seen with this Government over the past few years is a consistent commitment to burning diplomatic relationships with a whole range of countries, and when we burn those bridges it makes it much more difficult to achieve what we need to achieve in our own national interest.

The Government have promised a whole range of things from that Dispatch Box, and the Lords amendments on these rule of law issues are simply seeking to put in the Bill what Ministers have promised. Why else are they rejecting the amendment in the name of my noble friend, Lord Coaker, which simply asks the Government to commit to promises that they have made? Likewise, why not support the Lords amendment in the name of the noble Baroness Chakrabarti, which allows Ministers, officials and courts to consider whether Rwanda is safe for individuals on a case-by-case basis, if the Government support the principle of appeals, as Ministers claim that they do?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.