Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Steve Double Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

Is it not important to note that if the Bill is killed off on Third Reading, there is no opportunity to introduce another Bill to address this issue in this Parliament? We will be stuck in the current situation going into the election.

[Bob Seely]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. In the WhatsApp group in which we were chatting about this earlier, one of our north-east colleagues posted the idea that we could have a new Bill. I find that to be truly living in la-la land. The idea that everyone on the Government Benches would agree to a new Bill once we have killed this Bill is for the birds. It is this Bill or no Bill. It is this Bill or no chance. We have to face reality.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich spoke eloquently about the ECHR, and I want to touch on it because it is important. I am not a fan of it. Our freedoms and our liberties are not because of the ECHR. They are not because a Bulgarian judge gets out of bed at two in the morning to strike down democratically elected law. There is nobody in this House as willing as me to rewrite our relationship with the ECHR, but this Bill is not the time to do it. This is an argument for our manifesto. But if my hon. Friend were to suggest that what we need to do is make the ECHR advisory so that we fundamentally change our relationship and a vote in Parliament can overrule the ECHR, he will find no bigger champion than me. In the same way, we could look to review the Human Rights Act. I am as bored as him of hearing Ministers say in private, “We can’t do this, because of the Human Rights Act.” I pull my hair out. We are in Government. We should change the Human Rights Act if we do not like it. We should not use it as an excuse for inaction.