Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Suella Braverman Excerpts

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

This legislation will not stop the boats. What the Government really want to do is stop the vote, but they cannot do that. There will be an election, but not before we have done potentially irreparable damage. The Irish Government have yet to say what they think about this Bill, but the UK Government were clear in the ruling in October that they felt that refugees were covered by the Good Friday agreement. So in tabling this legislation, this Government are undermining their own logic about their obligations under the Good Friday agreement. Even if Conservative Members do not care about the trade and co-operation agreement, let us at least care about the peace process. Let us ensure that these issues about compatibility are not something out of “Alice in Wonderland” but speak to the best of this place and to those obligations, because I promise that we will all regret it if we do not speak up for freedom and liberty in this way.

[Suella Braverman (Fareham) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 11, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), which commands the support of 60 of my colleagues. I note the comments made by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and I would like to respond to some of them in the course of my speech.

We are here to fix a problem. It is the problem that we are all seized by, which is stopping the boats. This is our third attempt to fix this problem. We passed the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, we passed the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and we are here again in 2024, the third time round, with the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill. The British people are fed up. They have run out of patience and they have run out of time, and this is our last chance to get it right.

Amendment 11 seeks to remedy a fatal flaw in the Bill, which is that, as currently drafted, it will lead us directly to a rerun of the scenario that we saw on 14 June 2022, when the Home Office and the then Administration had identified a cohort of illegal migrants and filled a plane ready to take off to Rwanda, but at the 11th hour, pursuant to an opaque process, a decision was made by a still unidentified judge in a foreign court that had the effect of blocking the flight—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) have something to say?

[Patrick Grady]

I am not sure why we have to be frightened of foreign courts. What exactly is wrong with a foreign court?

[Suella Braverman]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman where we have a problem with a foreign court. In that scenario, when English courts had refused injunctions by the migrants to get off the flight, the foreign court overrode English judges, overrode the will of the Government and overrode the will of the British people to control our borders and stop the boats. That is the problem with a foreign court, and that is the problem that we are trying to fix.

When that flight was grounded in June 2022, it was because of rule 39 interim injunctions. Those orders are not contained in the European convention on human rights, and they are not a product or a content of the original convention. They are a creation of the Strasbourg court and the Strasbourg judges, and they have evolved over time pursuant to the living instrument doctrine that is espoused by the Strasbourg court and that has inflated and expanded its remit over decades, beyond anything conceived by the original drafters or any intention set out in the original versions of the European convention.

I believe that no one here disagrees with the aspirations and the content of the European convention on human rights. I do not disagree with anything set out in that document, which contains noble, vital and fundamental human rights that we are all proud to defend fervently and fiercely: against oppressive regimes; against authoritarianism; against genocide; against mass killings; and against some of the worst atrocities history has seen. That is the context of the European convention’s genesis.

To respond to the hon. Member for Walthamstow, the problem we are dealing with is the Court. It is the Court that has become politicised. It is the Court that has become interventionist. It is the Court that does not follow the traditional common-law rules of precedent to which the English courts subscribe. The Strasbourg Court and its judges have distorted the original European convention on human rights into something that bears no reflection to its original intention.

That has been exacerbated by Labour’s Human Rights Act. In recent decades we have seen a rights culture and litigiousness around immigration, asylum and many other areas. Public sector decision making has been stymied, thwarted and undermined by a heavily resourced, activist legal industry that is undermining Government decision making, stymying policy making and undermining law enforcement and public safety.

I have a few examples. Take the case of OO, a Nigerian national who was sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for offences including possession of crack cocaine and heroin with intent to supply. He pleaded guilty to battery and assault in 2017. Those are serious offences. In 2020, the first-tier tribunal allowed his appeal against deportation on the grounds that he had very significant obstacles to integration in Nigeria that outweighed the public interest in his deportation. Despite the seriousness of his offending, and despite the risk he posed to the public, his article 8 rights, interpreted in a vastly elastic way—a distorted, illogical way—operated to stop him being deported.

Article 3 was invoked in the case of D v. UK. We can all agree with article 3, which prohibits torture and inhumane or degrading treatment but, in this case of a non-UK national who was convicted of dealing drugs, the Strasbourg court held that the effect of discontinuing his medical treatment, available in the UK but not in his destination country, amounted to inhumane or degrading treatment under article 3. Why should a convicted drug dealer be entitled to public services here and not be deported?

[Sir John Hayes]

Surely on that basis almost any deportation could be blocked, for few countries in the world can match the standard of our NHS, and once that precedent has been set every person will claim that they require treatment for the most minor of ailments.

[Suella Braverman]

I am afraid that my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that point. Article 3, and a stretched interpretation of it originating in the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court, by politicised judges pursuing a political agenda, has led to a perception that here in the UK we have an international health service, not a national health service.

Lastly, let us consider the case of AM (Zimbabwe) in 2022, thanks to which it has now become law that states that want to remove someone have to prove that medical facilities available to the deportee in their home country would remove any real risk that their lifespan would be shortened by their removal from NHS facilities. That is exactly the point that my right hon. Friend has made: the UK Government now have a duty to establish that foreign health services are sufficient before we deport people who may well pose a risk to public safety and, in some cases, national security in this country.

Those are the overall problems with the Court—not the convention, but the Court. Rule 39 is another symptom of the problem that we have with the Court and the judges, which is why the amendment is vital. It will make it clear that rule 39 orders are not binding and that it will be for the UK Government to make the decision on deportation, not a foreign court—an unidentified judge somewhere far away who does not have the same ambition or aspiration as this UK Government to stop the boats. That is why I will support the amendment enthusiastically today.

Let me conclude by saying that this is our last chance to fix this problem. We have stretched the patience of the British people. This comes down to a simple but profound question: who governs Britain? Is it us, the democratically elected representatives who have been directly sent here on behalf of the British people, on a clear mandate and with a clear instruction of what to do, and whose laws are passed by a clear and transparent majority, to which we can all be held to account at the ballot box? Or is it an opaque forum many miles away, in a different country, that is distant, outsourced, foreign and does not share our values—

[Patrick Grady]

rose—

[Suella Braverman]

I will not give way.

Is it a forum that does not share our values, that has made decisions time and time again that are odds with what the British people have indicated they want and that has operated to undermine our public safety, national security and good governance?

It is the operation of the Strasbourg Court—we can call it the Strasbourg Court or a foreign court, and we can argue about semantics—the European Court of Human Rights, that we are concerned with here. That Court is currently controlling this country’s ability to stop the boats. That Court and its jurisprudence are preventing this Government from delivering for the British people. We made a vow to the British people that we would stop the boats. That was a solemn vow that I took incredibly seriously. It was what people voted for in 2016 in the Brexit referendum by a majority. I know that most Opposition Members do not want to believe in the majority, still live in denial and do not want to accept the facts. It is what people voted for by a huge majority in 2019: to control our borders and to stop the boats. We made a promise.

[Stella Creasy]

I know the right hon. and learned Lady feels this passionately, but will she clarify her concern about a “foreign court”? What does she think NATO is?

[Suella Braverman]

NATO is not a court. I am slightly embarrassed that I have to make that clear to the hon. Lady, as that is really elementary politics. We are being governed by a foreign court and judges who do not have our interests at heart. The decisions coming from that court are stopping us controlling our borders. The amendment will prevent that foreign court from stopping us, so we need to support the amendment because it will fix the Bill. The Bill needs to work. It is our last chance. If we get it wrong, the British people will not forgive us, and they will be right not to do so.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I now have to announce the results of today’s deferred Divisions.

On the draft Immigration Act 2014 (Residential Accommodation) (Maximum Penalty) Order 2023, the Ayes were 331 and the Noes were 51, so the Ayes have it.

On the draft Immigration (Employment of Adults Subject to Immigration Control) (Maximum Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2023, the Ayes were 331 and the Noes were 51, so the Ayes have it.

[The Division lists are published at the end of today’s debates.]