Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

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

[Alison Thewliss]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to come along to listen to Olivia Ndoti and the women at the Women’s Integration Network in Glasgow. Perhaps he will hear from people from Rwanda—this Government grant asylum to people from Rwanda, because their country is not safe.

I do not believe that anyone who supports this awful Bill can do so knowing the people it will affect. It is laid out in such cruel terms that they would remove the rights of our fellow human beings simply for seeking sanctuary and safety. It undermines our obligations under international law and denies the need for individualised protection, which is guaranteed under the anti-trafficking convention. That this Government seek to declare a country safe by legislating for it to be so is an absolute affront. Amendment 48 simply seeks to change “safe” to “unsafe”. For every decision maker to be forced to declare any country safe—regardless of the facts in front of them, regardless of their own knowledge and regardless of circumstance—flies in the face of the justice and the rights that the UK is supposed to stand for. It is illogical. Amnesty has called this “treating fact as false”.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Amendment 45, as the hon. Lady has just said, would permanently designate Rwanda an unsafe country. She has just complained about decision makers having to designate it the other way. Therefore, first, what is the difference? Secondly, is that not offensive to Rwanda? Thirdly, is that not worrying to the 100-plus refugees from Libya whom the UN recently settled in Rwanda? Under what circumstances would she then agree to legislation that recognised Rwanda again as a safe country?

[Alison Thewliss]

I believe that it is fundamentally unwise to recognise countries as safe in perpetuity, because things are unsafe. This amendment highlights the illogicality of this Bill. These things should not be legislated on at all. The hon. Gentleman mentions the Libyans who are being transited through Rwanda. They are not settling in Rwanda; they are being transited through Rwanda to other countries such as Canada.

[Tim Loughton]

rose—

[Alison Thewliss]

I wish to make some progress. The hon. Gentleman will be able to contribute later on.

I wish to touch on what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said about this. It has reviewed the updated UK-Rwanda scheme and it says:

“It maintains its position that the arrangement, as now articulated in the UK-Rwanda Partnership Treaty and accompanying legislative scheme, does not meet the required standards relating to the legality and appropriateness of the transfer of asylum seekers and is not compatible”—

it is not compatible—

“with international refugee law.”

Equally, this Bill does not have any kind of sunset clause, or a set of circumstances by which it can acknowledge a change in the situation in Rwanda. That is foolhardy, and it is bad legislation. The clauses that talk about mere monitoring of the situation do not go far enough. That is a prime example of the incompetence of this legislation and how it cannot really be made to work.

There has been ongoing tension, for example, with the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where recently re-elected President Tshisekedi has been quoted as saying in relation to Rwandan-backed M23 rebels:

“If you re-elect me and Rwanda persists…I will request the Parliament and Congress to authorise a declaration of war. We will march on Kigali. Tell Kagame those days of playing games with Congolese leaders are over.”

I ask Conservative Members what would happen to their precious treaty and to this legislation should such a situation escalate. None of us wants to see that, but it could happen. More importantly, what would happen in the interim to anybody the Home Secretary had sent to this unsafe situation in Rwanda? They would not be able to bring them back. That person would be stuck in a situation of conflict.

It is beyond me how Conservative Members, including former Ministers and members of the legal profession, can sign up to amendments shredding the rule of law and human rights. Our amendments 46 to 50 are, at the very minimum, an attempt to reinstate the powers of our courts and tribunals to do their work. They are the people qualified to make these decisions, and they do so for the most part with great diligence. Their services are stretched and there is much more that could be improved were the UK Government not chucking away hundreds of millions of pounds on distractions such as this legislation that they bring here today.

The Government have recently published their consultation response on safe and legal routes, following the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and it offers nothing. It offers no change whatsoever—no new safe and legal routes that would help to resolve the situation. The Refugee Council has presented a credible alternative, and the Minister could not be less interested.

I honestly do not know what to say about the amendments of the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), and his cabal. It sickens me that they would treat people in this way. Surely the only way in their minds that they can justify treating asylum seekers in this way is if they consider them to be less. If they do not matter, they can therefore be shipped off as if they were some kind of inconvenient waste. This is stirring up fear and hatred of people who only came here to ask for our protection. These are real lives; it is not some political game. I say to Conservative Members who are focused on this Tory psychodrama that this is about real people and real people’s lives. We on the SNP Benches see them as humans, just like us. Shame on all those Members.

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[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment. As night follows day, every migrant will say, “Rwanda may be generally safe”—I believe that it is—“but it is not safe for me.” That is one of the central intellectual incoherences, as the Government’s own lawyers have said, at the heart of the Bill. It envisages that Rwanda is generally safe but, for a range of unspecified reasons, foresees that it will not be safe for others. Of course, as we have seen in the past, one person will mount a successful challenge, and that will create a precedent. Every legal representative and non-governmental organisation like Care4Calais will then school everyone to make exactly the same challenge and, time and again, we will lose those cases in the courts. The Bill, in that respect, is legally flawed, but it is also operationally flawed because of that.

Let me explain to those who are, understandably, not as well versed as those of us who have been Ministers in this field: we have only 2,000 detained spaces in our immigration removal centres in this country. On a single day in August, 1,200 arrived illegally on our shores, so in a weekend, all the detained capacity in the whole United Kingdom would be consumed. When hon. Members are considering whether the Bill works, they should see it through that lens.

We have to get people out of the country within days, not months, and the operational plan behind the Bill foresees that it will take months for people to be removed from the country. What will happen is our detained capacity will be filled, and people will be bailed to hotels. They will then abscond and never be seen again. Within a single week in August, this scheme will have failed. That matters for the country and, of course, for the Government. It matters for trust in politics and Westminster, because we will have told people that it was going to work, knowing that it would not work. It also matters for all those other European countries that want the scheme to succeed in protecting our borders.

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend makes a good case for deterrents but, I fear, a bad case for his amendments. As the Home Affairs Committee found out, when the Rwanda scheme was announced, a big surge of people in Calais tried to regularise their status in France because they did not want to risk being sent to Rwanda, so deterrents do work. He has just said that this is the last opportunity to get this right. Does he not acknowledge that there is a large chance that his amendments would make the Bill unworkable, not least in the eyes of the Rwandan Government? In that case, there would be no deterrent, so what is the alternative?

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me address that question head-on. I have known my hon. Friend for a long time—he was not born yesterday. That argument is not a plausible one, in my opinion. The argument that the Rwandan Government would walk away from the scheme was raised not just at the eleventh hour, but at one minute to midnight. It is predicated on the belief that the Government of Rwanda would walk away from a scheme on the grounds that it might conceivably fall foul of the European convention on human rights, which Rwanda is not a party to, when the only reason we would fall foul of the convention would be conduct in Rwanda itself. I do not find that a plausible argument.

If that were the correct response, why then pilot a Bill through Parliament where the very front page says that the Government cannot attest to the Bill’s compliance with international law? Why would the Prime Minister say that he is willing to ignore foreign judges when his own legal advice says that that is in breach of international law? Why would we pursue a policy that the UNHCR said yesterday is, in its opinion, in breach of international law? That is not a plausible argument from the Government.

It was unwise of the Government to solicit that press release from the Government of Rwanda. I do not think that we should cast blame on the Government of Rwanda, because they are honourable people who want this scheme to work, and I have the highest opinion of our interlocutors in Rwanda. It is for that reason that I want to do what we said we would do when my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham created the scheme, which is to work with them in good faith to get the job done.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the former Immigration Minister for his comments. I enjoyed opposing him and, on some occasions, working with him. Look at the Ukraine scheme. That is an example of offshore processing: people’s applications were processed in Poland before they came to our country. Look at the Hong Kong scheme. There are plenty of ways of doing upstream and offshore processing. To coin a phrase, what matters is what works. What is absolutely clear is that it is difficult to imagine any scheme that could be more expensive than the Rwanda policy. I will now make some progress.

I cite the view of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and countless other legal experts, who have stated that the Bill is contrary to the rule of law because it amounts to a legislative usurpation of the judicial function. It is an assault on our country’s constitutional conventions, which require the legislature to respect the essence of the judicial function. Moreover, there is a staggering hypocrisy at the heart of the Bill when we consider it in the context of the treaty that has been signed with Rwanda. The purpose of that treaty is to bind the Rwandan Government into respecting the rule of law, and in particular the principle of non-refoulement. How on earth can Ministers hold the Rwandan authorities to account on these matters if they themselves are so blatantly and egregiously failing to practise what they preach?

[Tim Loughton]

It is a little disingenuous to liken this process to the Ukrainian scheme. The only criteria for the Ukrainian scheme were that a person had to be Ukrainian and come from Ukraine.

The hon. Gentleman has said that enforcement has gone down. Up to the end of November 2023, Home Office immigration enforcement arrested 246 people for people smuggling into the UK, and there were 124 convictions. That is in addition to those arrests and convictions that have happened on the continent, so in what sense are those figures declining, as the hon. Gentleman has just claimed?

[Stephen Kinnock]

There has been a 30% drop since 2010 in convictions of criminal smuggler gangs, and a 50% drop since 2010 in removals. I would be very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with clear details of those facts—we have the receipts.

It is against that fundamentally flawed and farcical backdrop that we seek to modify the legislation that is before us today. Our amendments are an attempt at damage limitation—an effort to moderate the most egregious aspects of this nonsensical and counterproductive Bill. Our amendment 35 acknowledges that, in November of last year, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal judgment. It ruled unanimously that the Rwanda policy was unlawful, because there were substantial grounds to believe that people transferred to Rwanda could be sent to countries where they would face persecution or inhumane treatment if Rwanda rejected their asylum claims, a practice known as refoulement.

The reason for those concerns relates to an issue that I first raised at this Dispatch Box back in April 2022, when the Rwanda plan was first announced. When Israel signed its deal with Rwanda in 2013, many of the asylum seekers who were sent from Israel to Rwanda were routinely moved clandestinely to Uganda, and in three cases, refoulement to Eritrea via Kenya was prevented only by the UNHCR intervening. It is little wonder that the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful in 2018, and it was closed down. In December, the Government signed a treaty with the Rwandan Government that says that refoulement is prohibited, and that anyone removed to Rwanda from the UK must be allowed to stay in Rwanda. Indeed, the only country to which people can be transferred from Rwanda is the UK, which under the deal must also accept some of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees and offenders sent back from that country.

That in itself tells a story. The fact that the UK Government and the Rwandan Government have agreed that Britain might need to take some Rwandan refugees is a stark admission that Rwanda is not a safe country for many people. Indeed, since the first £120 million payment by the British Government to Rwanda, six Rwandans have been granted safety and refuge in the UK. Then there is the tragic fact that Ministers are simply too afraid to address. In 2018, 12 Congolese refugees were shot dead by Rwandan police for protesting against food shortages. Our amendment 35 therefore permits British courts and tribunals to recognise and deal with the specific risks of refoulement associated with Rwanda by removing the relevant text from clause 2 of the Bill.

Likewise, our amendment 37 makes clear that decision makers must be able to take the risk of refoulement into consideration when processing asylum claims. The Bill designates Rwanda as a safe country, and therefore makes clear that

“Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda”

as such. It states that the Bill

“does not permit a decision-maker to consider any matter, claim or complaint to the extent that it relates to the issue of whether the Republic of Rwanda will or may remove or send the person in question to another State in contravention of any of its international obligations (including in particular its obligations under the Refugee Convention).”

However, as the Government have previously acknowledged, the facts on the ground can change, and decision makers should therefore be able to make their own judgments based on the latest court rulings. As such, we see no reason not to let decision makers do their jobs and make decisions based on all the knowledge available to them as the situation evolves, as opposed to the frankly absurd idea that Rwanda can be defined as safe in perpetuity.

I turn now to our new clause 6. The new treaty states that Rwanda is committed to addressing concerns that are laid out in the Supreme Court judgment, including refoulement. New clause 6 would help to ensure that Rwanda can be held accountable on its treaty commitments by placing the monitoring committee for the Rwanda treaty on a statutory basis, and by placing conditions on when the classification of Rwanda as safe can be suspended in accordance with the material conditions and/or non-compliance with obligations under the treaty. As things stand, the Government could vary the operating principles of the monitoring committee without it being possible for such changes to be challenged in our domestic courts. Our new clause 6 therefore addresses that unacceptable position by placing the monitoring committee on a statutory footing, making it judiciable and thus, by definition, more transparent and accountable. We see no reason why Government Members and Members across this House should oppose the principles of transparency and accountability on which our new clause 6 is based, and we hope they will join us in the Aye Lobby later.

Turning briefly to the amendments tabled by Government Members, I would point out that even one of their own colleagues, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green)—the chair of the One Nation group—has described many of those amendments as “authoritarian” and a betrayal of Conservative values. He is right. The Bill in its current form is already an assault on our reputation as a country that upholds the separation of powers and the rule of law, and the majority of the amendments tabled by Government Members would take us even further away from those basic democratic principles. Let me be clear: Labour Members will proudly be voting against the amendments that are being promoted by Conservative Members, because the Government’s Rwanda policy is unaffordable, unworkable and unlawful; because the Bill is an affront to the values that we hold dear; and because we will always stand up for the separation of powers, the rule of law, and ensuring that we can stand tall in the world.

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[Olivia Blake]

I entirely agree. That is an important point, and we are struggling to get much sense out of the Government on it. I have asked repeatedly whether safe and legal routes are available to people trying to flee from parts of the world where genocide has been declared, but unfortunately the answer has always been “The safe and legal routes that exist are all that we will offer.” I do not think that that is good enough, and I think we need to have that conversation about safe and legal routes.

The problems that I have listed are the real, human problems. That is the real cost to human life and wellbeing that the Government’s “hostile environment” policy brings. This Bill is another example of Ministers’ doubling down on that approach, and the amendments tabled by Conservative Back Benchers—I believe they are amendments 10, 19, 20, 21, 22, 56 and 57—take it even further.

[Tim Loughton]

As the hon. Lady knows, I agree with her that we need to extend safe and legal routes—that is why I tabled my amendment previously, which I hope the Government will honour—but does she not also acknowledge that, even if there were safe and legal routes that could be used by legitimate refugees fleeing from genuine violence and oppression, the bogus asylum seekers who do not meet those criteria would still use people smugglers? That is why we need to be able to deter and clamp down on them so that they do not set foot on our shores.

[Olivia Blake]

We need the safe and legal routes first. The rates at which people are accepted as having a reasonable claim and are given a form of leave to remain in the UK are very high: in recent years, the rates at which applications are accepted have been as high as 67%. I do not believe that a large number of people are coming here illegally without good claims. Indeed, I think the opposite is true, given the evidence from our own systems.

[Tim Loughton]

That is an interesting point, but how does the hon. Lady explain the fact that France receives more asylum applications than we do but rejects twice as many? What are we doing differently?

[Olivia Blake]

I would hope that our system has the trust of its politicians and is robust enough to ensure that we are making the right decisions whenever possible, although I still believe that there should be an appeals process within that system. I cannot say that the system always gets it right, and that is certainly borne out by the casework that I have seen. It is more complicated than saying, “This action will reduce this and that action will increase that.” It is a very complicated system, and the most obvious thing to say about it is that in the past few years and months the second or third highest number of people arriving here in small boats has been people from Afghanistan. We are also seeing people fleeing from Syria and from all sorts of other complex and difficult situations at the moment. That does not take away from the fact that it is not necessarily about the nation those people come from and that it is also about their individual circumstances. I have spoken a lot about the rights of LGBT people and disabled people seeking asylum and how we need to make sure that any system maintains that individual view of an individual going through our system. That is a lesson that should be learned from the Windrush review.

At its core, the hostile environment is a policy designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for everyone who comes here and to prevent anyone from accessing the support that international law says is rightfully theirs, and now the Government are proposing to outsource what little responsibility they have taken by offloading their obligations and offshoring refugees against their will. It is no wonder that they are recklessly declaring Rwanda as safe, despite the known risks. As the shadow Minister pointed out, since the Government signed their deportation deal, six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum here in the UK. Torture persists there, along with continued risks of refoulement to third countries, which is the reason I support amendments 35 and 37.

Human Rights Watch’s reports on Rwanda as part of its World Report series published in 2021, 2022 and 2023 all include examples of torture in Rwanda. In the UN Human Rights Council’s periodic review of Rwanda published in January 2021, it was the UK Government who criticised Rwanda for

“extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.

The country has a continued history of breaching obligations under the refugee convention, and between 2020 and 2022 the UNHCR found that Afghan, Syrian and Yemeni asylum seekers had 100% rejection rate in Rwanda. Those are statistics that I am sure people would find shocking given our granting rate. It is common for discrimination and abuse to be faced by LGBTQ+ people in Rwanda. Same-sex marriage is prohibited, and LGBTQ+ people are not protected from discrimination by any specific legislation there. All this makes a mockery of clause 2 of the Bill.

Ministers can continue to use ad hoc Bills such as this one to paper over the cracks in their asylum policy, but the truth is that the foundations of their approach are completely rotten. Rather than chasing headlines, it is time they thought again and built an asylum system that puts respect for international law and basic human dignity first.