Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Home Office
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Home Office
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsTuesday 12th December 2023
(5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
James Cleverly
I will make further progress. As I say, the principle of relocating people to a safe country to have their asylum claims processed is entirely consistent with the terms of the refugee convention. The High Court and the Court of Appeal unanimously confirmed that, and the Supreme Court did not dispute those findings in own findings three weeks ago.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is clear in international law and in relation to the question of the rule of law that in this country, with our unwritten constitution, a clear and unambiguous use of words, clearly establishing the intention of Parliament in the enactment of a law, takes precedence over international law, in accordance with the judgments of Lord Hoffmann, as well as judgments and statements by Lord Judge, Lord Denning and other very distinguished jurists, including in paragraph 144 of the judgment made last month?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes an important point. He is right that when the wording of a Bill is clear and unambiguous—where there is a deeming clause—that is the express will of Parliament, that Parliament is sovereign, and that that thinking must be adhered to through the legal process.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The recent Rwanda case is the most recent case on matters relating to parliamentary intentions, the supremacy of law and the rule of law, and the proper application of the rule of law. One claimant—and it requires only one claimant—had his claim dismissed by the Supreme Court on the grounds that parliamentary sovereignty had already undermined his case. The case was about retained EU law, but it actually undermined the case of that claimant. That was a clear indication that the Court was going to take the sovereignty of Parliament first, and that is the key issue in this debate.
It has been said by the courts that sovereignty trumps international law. It is absolutely clear that that is the case. Only this year, the House of Lords Constitution Committee, in paragraph 58 of its report on the rule of law, stated:
“Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can legislate contrary to the UK’s obligations under international law.”
That was a reinforcement of the judgments I mentioned in an intervention, including those of Lord Hoffmann, Lord Bingham and Lord Denning. Our greatest jurists have all come to exactly the same conclusion. The President of the current Supreme Court, which dealt with the Rwanda case, said the same thing in paragraph 144 of its judgment in that case:
“the principle of legality does not permit a court to disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention such as that with which we are concerned”.
So, the position is completely clear and those cases—
Sir William Cash
Before the hon. and learned Lady seeks to intervene, I want to get this quite clear. The Miller case was on a different set of circumstances. Not only that, but it has been overtaken by subsequent constitutional judgments by the Supreme Court itself. I want to quote now from Lord—
Joanna Cherry
It is refreshing to know that my article 10 rights have not been withdrawn yet. The point is this. The hon. Gentleman may be right, as a matter of domestic law of England that the sovereignty of the English Parliament allows England to change its domestic law internally. [Interruption.] He may be right; it is in dispute as we know. What he is definitely not right about is that this Parliament cannot domestically legislate to take us out of our international legal obligations without doing so clearly. The Supreme Court has been crystal clear about that. There are two separate matters here: domestic law and international law. If the Government want to breach their international legal obligations, am I not right, based on Supreme Court authority, that they will actually have to withdraw from the treaties to which they are committed?
Sir William Cash
Absolutely. I am glad that the hon. and learned Lady mentioned the fact that an unambiguous statement—an explicit statement, as Lord Sumption puts it—on the position in interpreting the intentions of Parliament carries enormous weight and, in fact, overrides international law obligations.
Sir William Cash
No, I will not give way.
I am going to quote directly from Lord Hoffman himself in relation to an ECHR case. [Interruption.] This is the case of R. v. Lyons 2003. He states:
“the Convention is an international treaty and the ECtHR is an international court with jurisdiction under international law to interpret and apply it. But the question…is a matter of English law. And it is firmly established that international treaties do not form part of English law and that English courts have no jurisdiction to interpret or apply them…Parliament may pass a law which mirrors the terms of the treaty and in that sense incorporates the treaty into English law. But even then the metaphor of incorporation may be misleading. It is not the treaty but the statute which forms part of English law. And English courts will not (unless the statute expressly so provides) be bound to give effect to interpretations of the treaty by an international court, even though the United Kingdom is bound by international law to do so. Of course there is a strong presumption in favour of interpreting English law…in a way which does not place the United Kingdom in breach of an international obligation”—
but, and this is absolutely crucial—
“The sovereign legislator in the United Kingdom is Parliament. If Parliament has plainly laid down the law, it is the duty of the courts to apply it, whether that would involve the Crown in breach of an international treaty or not.”
That is what the law is. That is a straightforward interpretation and statement.
There is an issue that I want to come to. I praise my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for his courage and for a brilliant speech, and endorse every word he said, but I would also like to say this: we want the Government to succeed in their legislation, but it has to be legislation that works. As I have explained, in relation to the Supreme Court, the whole question turns on the intention of Parliament and the sovereignty of Parliament. It is a question of justiciability as well. I put to my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Illegal Migration that, when it comes to it, we can make changes to the Bill. It is possible to extend the scope of the Bill, and I hope he will have discussions with the Clerk of Public Bills, with whom I have had discussions already.
It is absolutely clear that the scope of the Bill will determine the amendments, whether from the Government or Back Benchers. It matters that we are entitled to have a proper debate on this fundamental question about international law and its relationship to sovereignty. The Bill, if enacted after Royal Assent, could be scuppered by one claimant and by the courts if the words of the Act are not clearly expressed and explicit in ruling out any such claim, for example under clause 4 or any other heading, such as rule 39 and all the other things we will no doubt trot out in Committee if we get there. We therefore have to address the question of the scope of the Bill, because that is the way that Parliament functions. That is the way Mr Speaker must decide on the selection of amendments, so it is crucial.
There is much more that I could say, but I let me end by drawing attention to the global issue. The fact is that throughout the European Union there is a real problem. They are tearing their hair out, because on the one hand they have the charter of fundamental rights, and on the other they are bound by qualified majority voting to comply with the situation, which is actually not the same for us. We have a unique opportunity, in our parliamentary system and with the sovereignty of Parliament, to be able to make amendments and provide domestic law that will satisfy the voters of this country.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
I cannot give way; I do not have time.
Let me move to the third and most important question, which relates to the exclusion of access to courts. This Bill carefully preserves the right of individuals to come to court in extreme cases of individual justice. I listened, impressed, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), and I submit to those who think the Bill goes far enough that we cannot sacrifice the principle of access to a court. If we eliminated it entirely, not only would the Bill collapse because it would be interminably impeded in the House of Lords, but it would probably lead to the Rwandan Government withdrawing; and it is conceivable that the courts could entertain, for the first time, a complex challenge about the right of this Parliament to do away with fundamental constitutional principles such as access to a court. The supremacy of this House does not necessarily mean that it does not operate within a complex system of constitutional institutions, each of which has its own place as a component part in that system.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
No, I cannot give way; I simply do not have time.
Constitutional principles compete in creative tension. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important of them, but there are others that are fundamental and one of them is access to a court in extreme cases. That is what this Bill preserves. I say to my right hon. Friends that I understand their frustration and their deep, intense dissatisfaction with the current situation; I share it. I think that there is tightening that we could do, particularly on rule 39. But on the preservation of the right to go to court in an extreme case, I say that is part of the British constitution that our fathers and our party have supported, and for which they have fought, for generations, and it would be wrong of us to compromise on that—
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), and I was pleased to hear his strong invocation of the fallacy that we live in a separation of powers constitution. We do not; we live in a constitution of checks and balances. We are proud to have an independent judiciary and an independent legal profession underpinning the rule of law, which we are all equal under and subject to. We also have a Parliament that is supreme—the “Crown in Parliament” is the phrase. That is why, like my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), I take issue with some of the wording in clause 1, but that is by the bye.
The principle of comity is one that we can ill afford to overlook. What do I mean by that? I am talking about the mutual respect that has to exist between the different arms of the constitution. This place is sovereign—we derive our sovereignty from the people—but we also have a responsibility to use that in the responsible way. This is not a new challenge; previous generations have faced similar dilemmas.
I am not going to stand here and minimise the emergency that we face from illegal migration or the challenge that the entire west faces from the mass migration of people who might seek a better life and who are either fleeing war-torn countries or coming for economic reasons. This is an unprecedented challenge for all western democracies. However, such challenges have been faced in the past. When we were at war, we had to make very difficult decisions in this Parliament to make sure that we struck the right constitutional balance in defending these islands against dictatorship, but not in a way that defended us and protected us out of our very freedoms. Our very liberty itself is at stake, and the way in which we legislate has to be responsible and in line with that respect for our fundamental freedoms.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) said, there is a fundamental truth here that we cannot avoid: if this Bill is amended to create an utter and complete ouster from any individual-based challenge, that goes beyond the parameters of reasonableness and into the sort of legislation that inevitably sets up a fistfight, not with international courts, but with our very own courts.
Sir William Cash
My right hon. and learned Friend is more than aware of the Privacy International case. He knows, as well as I do, that there was a dissenting judgment in that case by both Jonathan Sumption and Lord Reed, which sums up the situation. It is very finely balanced on the facts of that particular case.
Sir Robert Buckland
Contrary to mythology within the Conservative party, my hon. Friend and I agree on many of these key issues. He and I would have legislated over the Evans decision about the Prince of Wales’s letters, because we felt that their lordships went too far. That is an example of this House and this Parliament potentially legislating to correct a legal decision by the courts. Of course we are entitled to do that and we should do it where the will of Parliament dictates.
However, there is a difference between a scenario like that and the one that we face at the moment. Without more evidence and work by the Government, to blithely create a deeming provision in the face of a very strong Supreme Court decision against the Government would have been to invite disaster. That is why not only the treaty that has been signed between Rwanda and Britain is crucial, but also the policy statement that has been published by the Home Secretary today and laid in the House, which I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to read. There is no doubt that the facts are evolving and changing. We should remind ourselves that when the Supreme Court made its decision it looked at the law and the facts as of the summer of last year—some 18 months ago—and we have moved on considerably.
The new provisions are not constitutionally unprecedented. They are unusual, which is why the Government must be restrained. Without clause 4 in the Bill, I am afraid that the Government will set up a massive glass jaw to be smashed by a court in the future, and to invite the sort of constitutional conflict that any good Conservative would not want to see. We do not want our courts being drawn into politics. I have spent my career in this place and my political life arguing against the politicisation of the judiciary, and I have been the first to bring forward legislation to oust the court’s jurisdiction. We did so in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, on the Cart judicial review—my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) finished the job on that.
I am more than happy to be robust about the position of this place and the importance of not having undue and capricious interference with the will of Parliament. I am the first person to assert the authority of this place, but I will not be party to legislation that, in effect, invites the courts to “Come on up, if you’re hard enough”. That is not the approach that we, as responsible Conservatives, should take. To echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, if this Bill is to be amended in any way that crosses that line, I cannot and will not support that.
If anything, the Government should be thinking carefully about ensuring that the Bill is engineered to provide as perfect a balance as possible between their obvious right, as a Government, to get their policy object through, to reflect the huge concerns of our constituents, but, at the same time, to work within the parameters of our unwritten constitution. Today we have a Conservative Government, but what if a Government of another colour was doing something that we, as Conservatives, found mortally offensive? What would we have to rely upon in the defence of the balance of this constitution? What would be left for us to defend against an over-mighty socialist Government? Not a lot. Yes, it is about principle, but at the end we must not lose sight of the fact that as Conservatives it is our constitutional duty to maintain that balance. Remember comity, Mr Deputy Speaker, and we will not go wrong.
Michael Tomlinson
It will start off in the hundreds and scale up into the thousands. I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Whenever he speaks, I always think he has a smile behind the grimace and the stare. I always enjoy his speeches, and I always enjoy hearing him being heckled from this side of the House.
Conservative Members are anxious about spurious claims; about people asserting that they are unwell and unfit to fly, when the contrary is the case. Those who are making the crossing in small boats are not unwell; they are fit, young men. Some 84% of those making the crossings are male, and 77% of those are aged between 18 and 39. I agree with my right hon. and hon. Friends when they say they want to make this work and make it legally tight. That is absolutely right, and I want to join them in that endeavour.
Sir William Cash
I wish to be a little formal about this. Will my hon. and learned Friend seek a ruling from Mr Speaker that the Bill’s long title and scope may be amended, to ensure that amendments may be tabled and selected, at least by the Government and even by Back Benchers, as on previous occasions?
Michael Tomlinson
I say directly to my hon. Friend that I will continue to work with him on this. I will come back to his specific points, and I hope I will address his very concern, perhaps in response to the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones).
My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham, my hon. Friends the Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and others spoke powerfully and directly. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham rightly talked about the UNHCR and the EU. How galling it was to see that, the very day after the UNHCR advocated in the Supreme Court that Rwanda is not safe, the UNHCR itself sent 168 refugees to Rwanda as part of hundreds and thousands under a scheme that is already up and running, and supported and backed by the EU to the tune of millions of euros. We need to hear more of that, so I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) raised a specific point that I want to address head-on. This Bill will apply in full in Northern Ireland, in the same way that it applies in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is explicit, it is on the face of the Bill and will always be the case, reflecting that immigration policy is a UK-wide matter. I want to be particularly clear that nothing in the Windsor framework or the trade and co-operation agreement affects that. Where people have raised concern is on the rights chapter of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, which I want to be clear does not affect any clause in this Bill in any way.
I think I have time to address the specific concern that the hon. Member for Strangford raised. It is important to be clear that the 2005 procedural directive is not within the annexes of the Windsor framework.
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone) Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsTuesday 16th January 2024
(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 16 January 2024 - (16 Jan 2024)
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we accept that international co-operation with our European partners and allies must be at the heart of dealing with the gangs, as he so eloquently sets out, the possibility of that co-operation is fundamentally undermined when our Government are flagrantly prepared to break international law, which should underpin the trust that is a prerequisite for all such co-operation. Co-operation based on joint working and intelligence-sharing with our partners and allies is possible only if Britain is deemed a trustworthy partner.
That brings me to the third reason for our opposition to the legislation and the amendments tabled by so many Conservative Members. We find ourselves in the utterly extraordinary position of debating a Government policy that has been found to be unlawful by the highest court in our land. Amendment 35, which I will come to shortly, reflects that very fact. We find ourselves confronted by a Government who are seeking to legislate for an alternate reality. Although Ministers appear to believe that they can pass a Bill that determines that the sky is green and the grass is blue, that does not make it so.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Has it escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that one claim was dismissed by the Supreme Court judgment on Rwanda? That was an Iraqi in the case of ASM. The reason was very simple: the Court made it crystal clear in paragraph 144 of its judgment that the issue in question, as far as that claimant was concerned, was undermined by clear and unambiguous words in an Act of Parliament. In other words, the sovereignty of Parliament prevailed.
Stephen Kinnock
Of course Parliament is sovereign, and of course we in this place are sent here to make laws, but we must make those laws with restraint; we must make them while respecting the judicial function. The separation of powers is fundamental to our identity as a liberal democracy, so although the hon. Gentleman very often talks about the sovereignty of Parliament, it is vital that his comments are always founded on the principle of separation of powers and the checks and balances that it gives us.
Sir William Cash
We want the Bill to succeed. We want it to work and to do what our voters want, but at present it does not. Clause 2, as it stands, does not work, which is why I shall press my amendment 10 to a vote, supported as it is by well over 60 Members of Parliament. Clause 2 needs to be amended with clear and unambiguous words, and with a full “notwithstanding” formula, not the one currently on offer. This formula has been used throughout our legislative history, for hundreds of years, but most recently it has been enacted in our most important domestic constitutional legislation, without opposition—namely, in section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.
The sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament is democracy, and it is described in a leading case by the great Lord Bingham, our greatest modern jurist, as the “bedrock of our constitution”. Democracy delivers the wishes of the voters who elect us through the legislation that we pass as Acts of Parliament, and it is this democracy for which people fought and died. Nothing can be more important to their daily lives, including illegal immigration, and that is why this issue is so important.
However, it is also important to stress that genuine refugees are fairly protected—this country has always done that—as in the case of Afghanistan, Hong Kong and so forth. Yesterday’s YouGov poll makes it clear how strongly people feel about all this. It is a legal and constitutional, and therefore also essentially political, problem.
The reason why sovereignty is so fundamental is that the courts recognise that they have a duty to interpret, adjudicate on and obey the laws made under that parliamentary sovereignty, where legislative words are clear, express, explicit and unambiguous. Therefore, the use of a comprehensive “notwithstanding” formula, as in my amendment, would ensure that we make the Bill work in line with its intended purposes, and that it would not be frustrated by claims of international law or other contrary law.
The Bill in its current form will not prevent, as everyone knows, further ingenious individual claims, followed by further Supreme Court decisions. The recent Supreme Court judgment on 15 November 2023, as I pointed out in an intervention, makes my very point. It shows that the words in the immigration and asylum Acts at that point in time were not clear and unambiguous. However, and this is vital, it seems to have escaped many people’s notice that one of the claimants—ASM, an Iraqi—had his claim dismissed in that very judgment because, in the words of Lord Reed, the President of the Supreme Court himself,
“in any event, the principle of legality does not permit a court to disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention such as that”—
I say this to the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on the Opposition Front Bench—
“with which we are concerned in the present case.”
This was emphatically because the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 and related immigration legislation was so clear and unambiguous in that case as to require the Court to dismiss the claim of the Iraqi precisely as a matter of parliamentary sovereignty.
John Redwood
My hon. Friend is doing a wonderful job, as always. Did he see the recent briefings, which seemed to come from the Government, that they are expecting a lot of cases under their law and are going to provide a lot more judges for them? Are they not telling us that this is not going to work?
Sir William Cash
I am afraid to say that does appear to be the inevitable inference to be drawn from the statements that have been made. The worry is that, unless the law is completely clear and unambiguous, there is going to be more trouble, and if the Bill was to be passed with clear and unambiguous words, the Government would not need the judges that they seem to want to employ—and nor, for that matter, all the fees that the lawyers will accumulate as a result of taking part in some very spurious cases.
As I have said, the Rwanda judgment is in line with all previous judgments by pre-eminent jurists in recent generations, such as—I mention but a few—Lord Denning, Lord Reid, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Bingham and others. Months ago, I sent the Prime Minister a seven-page memorandum, each line of which set out breaches of international law in almost every jurisdiction in the world, including even the EU itself, the United States, France and Germany, where clearly apparent breaches of international law have occurred without international sanctions. As for the Vienna convention, what really matters is whether the internal domestic law is of fundamental importance in the national interest, and this illegal immigration law manifestly is.
In the UK, we have a dualist system of law in which the sovereignty of Parliament is fundamental to our rule of law and cannot be trumped by international law, the opinions or conventions of the Government Legal Service or—speaking as a former shadow Attorney General—if this be the case, even by an Attorney General. We have a dualistic approach to these matters in which domestic law and international law are seen as independent of one another. The recent Miller 1 judgment states, at paragraph 57, that our
“dualist system is a necessary corollary of Parliamentary sovereignty…it exists to protect Parliament not ministers.”
Furthermore, as Lord Hoffmann made so clear in R v. Lyons in 2002, the courts will have regard to the words of the statute, not the treaty. This is because we have no written constitution defining the internal status of international law within the United Kingdom. As Lord Bingham has said, international law is
“complementary to the national laws of individual states and in no way antagonistic to them”.
International law is not supranational, unlike European law.
British courts cannot deem a statute unconstitutional. Under our constitution, it is the King in Parliament who legislates, not His Majesty’s Government—I thought they had learned that in the civil war of the 1640s. The court does not require to have regard to functions of Government when interpreting the law. A statute, even when arising from an international treaty, will always prevail over a rule of international law. Lord Hoffmann, in the case of R v. Lyons in 2002—I will quote what he says, as I cannot improve on it—stated that
“it is firmly established that international treaties do not form part of English law and that English courts have no jurisdiction to interpret or apply them… It is not the treaty but the statute which forms part of English law. And English courts will not (unless the statute expressly so provides) be bound to give effect to interpretations of the treaty by an international court, even though the United Kingdom is bound by international law to do so... The sovereign legislator in the United Kingdom is Parliament. If Parliament has plainly laid down the law, it is the duty of the courts to apply it, whether that would involve the Crown in breach of an international treaty or not.”
Nothing could be clearer.
In Bradley and Ewing’s authoritative book “Constitutional and Administrative Law”, it is clearly stated that the legislative supremacy of Parliament is not limited by international law. The courts may not hold an Act void on the grounds that it contravenes general principles of international law. Indeed, the Labour Government in 1998 specifically reaffirmed the sovereignty of Parliament in relation to their Human Rights Act, saying that they would not seek to transfer power from future Parliaments to the courts because that would confer on the judiciary a general power over the decisions of Parliament and would draw the judiciary into serious conflict with Parliament. Their own White Paper stated of the judiciary:
“There is no evidence to suggest that they desire this power, nor that the public wish them to have it.”
I do wish the hon. Member for Aberavon was listening to this, because it is about the Labour party, and this still applies today.
Indeed, under paragraph 53 of the House of Lords Constitution Committee’s report of 18 January 2023, the Committee accepts that UK domestic law can
“diverge from obligations agreed by the Government under an international treaty, and ratified following the CRAG”—
Constitutional Reform and Governance Act—
“procedures... And parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament could legislate to ensure that domestic law differed from the requirements of a treaty.”
Paragraph 54 states:
“Parliament having enacted legislation that is not compliant with the UK’s international obligations, the courts are bound to apply that law.”
Paragraph 58 goes on to state:
“Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can legislate contrary to the UK’s obligations under international law.”
There we have it. And I should add that many members of that Committee, such as Lord Falconer of Thoroton, are certainly not Conservatives or Brexiteers. So there we are—we are all agreed.
In our unique unwritten constitution, our sovereignty patently prevails over international law, which is, for example, in contrast with that of Germany. What happens there? Article 25 of its written constitution, which I have taken from an established work on public international law, states as follows—these are the words of the very constitution in Germany:
“The general rules of public international law are an integral part of federal law. They shall take precedence over the laws, and shall directly create rights and duties for the inhabitants of the federal territory.”
Similar provisions apply under the Dutch constitution, in articles 65 and 66. That tells us that there is a dualist system, and some countries take a view that is different from ours. We just happen to be on the right side of the fence. Similar provisions may be applied by specialist international lawyers, and they may seek to make out that international law in this country prevails over clearly explicit words in Acts of Parliament and parliamentary sovereignty. But no House of Lords or Supreme Court case supports that proposition.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I am very much enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech, as always. He gave the example of Germany, which for obvious historical reasons has imported principles of international law into its own domestic constitutional law. For example, the German Supreme Court, the Federal Constitutional Court, still reserves its right to be the final arbiter of whether, for example, European Union law is compatible with German basic law.
Sir William Cash
I am extremely glad that my hon. Friend has made that point, because I had the disobliging necessity to read some of the Supreme Court judgments from Germany. Sometimes—believe me—they run to nearly 1,000 pages, for the simple reason that they are struggling to find something that will support the German people, compared with some of the rules of law that are applied more generally on an international footing, which cause them so much trouble.
As I have said—my hon. Friend has just made my point for me—the European Union is in a complete mess on the issue of illegal migration, and we are well out of it. It still has the charter of fundamental rights, which we excluded in our withdrawal agreement, and legal changes to its immigration law, all of which will require hotly contested constitutional changes and referenda in its member states. It is going to be bedevilled by referenda and constitutional change, and I fear it will not succeed. Very many are up in arms about compulsory quotas and fines for non-compliance being imposed on them under the new pact on migration and asylum, which was passed by majority vote. It is noteworthy that recently the French Government defied rulings of the Strasbourg Court regarding the deportation of an Uzbek national, but they cannot apparently trace him as ordered by their own Supreme Court—[Interruption.] In reply to the barracking I am receiving, I simply point out that the relevance of this is that we are talking about our constitution, which can solve the problem, and about theirs, which cannot.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a compelling argument about the difference between this country and those abroad who failed to take back control when we did. He will know that constitutionalists from Dicey to Denning, and from Lord Woolf to Lord Sumption, agree with him that this place is supreme. The supremacy of Parliament is at stake as we debate his amendment and the Bill.
Sir William Cash
I have to say, with all humility, that it is not so much that I agree with them, or that they agree with me, but that this is the law of our land. This is the rule of law as it applies to the United Kingdom, and it is a tribute to the British people that they took that decision in 2016.
As I said to the Prime Minister in December’s Liaison Committee, he can be a world leader on the issue of illegal migration, not only in the EU, but also in the United States, Canada and Australia—every country in the world. The international refugee convention, among other conventions, is seen as requiring reform. In Europe, it is clear that they need to change the European convention on human rights as well as EU immigration law, and European Union voters are voting with their feet.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
I want to begin by talking about the remarkable contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), to whose amendment I wish to speak. In a constituency such as mine, which voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, the work that he has done over many decades is appreciated, and it is something that has served the national interest, so I am somewhat nervous about criticising amendment 10. None the less, I know that he and I, more than anything else, can disagree courteously, which is perhaps more than I and many others have managed with some Brexiteers who have perhaps got too much credit for a project that has now run its course.
I could talk a little about why I worry that a Bill that is already judged to have a 50:50 chance of success could, in the pursuit of toughening it up, be driven to having a far lesser chance of success. The people who say that they want it to work, and to work quickly, in fact run the risk of driving it into the courts, seeing it fail and seeing us as a party take less of the action that is so clearly in the national interest.
Sir William Cash
Having looked at my amendment carefully, has my hon. Friend observed that the only way to guarantee that this Bill will be satisfactorily regarded by the courts is if the sovereignty of an Act of Parliament is combined with clear, unambiguous words that improve the Bill? That does not mean that it will not go through; it means that it will go through and the courts will accept it.
Matt Warman
I would agree with my hon. Friend that the Bill could go through, but that does not guarantee legal success, as he knows. He is right to say that there is a respectable legal argument to be made for it, but a respectable legal argument does not guarantee success. I want, not least because of the poll that he and others have cited, to see us taking clear and effective action on this. To be successful, that clear and effective action must be able to survive the potential legal challenges. I argue in favour of the tightrope on which the Government are walking not because I lack conviction but because I want to see action as quickly as possible on an issue that, I hear from my constituents day in, day out, has a clear and real impact on their lives.
Only yesterday, the Home Office announced that it is closing another two hotels in my constituency that are being used to house asylum seekers. The global migration crisis is on the doorstep of constituents in Boston and Skegness, which is why we must tackle it effectively. I will take no lectures from anyone in this Committee on my personal commitment to tackling this issue, and I want the Government to stay on the tightrope and to get on with addressing this vital matter.
Sir William Cash
I hope my hon. Friend noticed that I said that changes to the European Union’s charter of fundamental rights and the European Court of Human Rights will ultimately lead to constitutional referenda and amendments, which would not only take a long time but might be impossible.
Matt Warman
I fear that some of what my hon. Friend says is correct, but it is also true that we lessen our ability to make that case, on our own behalf and in the global interest, if we step back. I want to see Britain leading that conversation and taking its place at the table. If we can do that, we will be able to construct a global system today, just as we did 70 years ago. It worked then, and we need a system that works now.
The more we send a signal that says Britain is stepping back, the less we have the right to make the case, and making that case is surely in the interest of all our constituents. My hon. Friend is right that it will take a long time, but he surely has to acknowledge that we must have that long-term view, because this global migration crisis will be with us for decades. If we step back, we will have less right to influence that conversation.
Michael Tomlinson
The deterrent is because they are seeking to come to this country and not Rwanda. I hope the hon. Gentleman listens to the evidence that I am about to set out. He has sat through a fair amount of the debate and I always enjoy taking interventions from him, so I encourage him to consider the evidence as I progress with my remarks.
Sir William Cash
As he heard, I made reference to the Rwanda judgment and the case of ASM, whose claim was dismissed because of the sovereignty of Parliament in the context of immigration laws that were revoked under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023. That is a perfect example of what the courts will do under paragraph 144 of the judgment. Does he accept that it is the sovereignty of Parliament that led the Court to make that decision, as it itself stated?
Michael Tomlinson
As my hon. Friend knows, he and I agree on a great deal and I have paragraph 144 engraved on my heart. We have had a number of exchanges about that paragraph, and it is clear that the Court will not disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention, as set out in paragraph 144. I will come back to the comments made by my hon. Friend a little later in my speech.
Since the evidential position considered by the courts in summer 2022, there have been further specific information, evidence and assurances from the Government of Rwanda that explicitly address the challenges raised by the claimants and the UNHCR in the litigation, and the findings of the Supreme Court, following its judgment in November. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) mentioned the evidence and the importance of looking at it, so it is worth setting out some of that here, at least in outline.
First, let me set out the headlines from the world rankings. The World Economic Forum global gender gap report ranked Rwanda 12th in the world for gender parity. Interestingly, it ranked the UK 15th. Secondly, Rwanda’s overall score in the World Justice Project’s rule of law has increased consistently from 2019 and 2023, and Rwanda ranked first in its region and 41st out of 142 globally. I will come back to that important point and provide more detail. The World Bank scored Rwanda 16 out of a maximum score of 18. That is just some of the evidence.
The Government published a policy note on the date of Second Reading and it has been updated this month. There are country information notes on Rwanda’s human rights and asylum system, and on the evidence provided by the Government of Rwanda and the UNHCR. A lot of that evidence is substantial and helpful, but we have not cherry picked evidence, unlike some Members. Other material has also been published. It is worth considering that evidence because that is what has changed since summer 2022.
Michael Tomlinson
No, I am saying that this House passed legislation last night stating that India is generally a safe country for the purposes set out in the legislation. I point out—I am grateful to him and other hon. Members who are listening—that India happens to be 79th in the global rankings. Vietnam, where we regularly return citizens to, is 87th. Albania, which we have mentioned and I will come back to, is 91st, and Rwanda is 41st on that list. It is marginally lower down the rankings than Poland, comparable to Romania and higher than Croatia, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary and all these other countries that are safe, strong international partners of this country. That is the evidence that has been published and that is before the House, and that evidence shows compellingly that Rwanda is a safe country.
I turn to amendments 19, 20, 21 and 22 and amendment 10. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for his engagement and remarks—he is absolutely right. He set out the moral imperative that we need to act and limit individual claims, and I agree that we need to focus on what works.
As I said earlier, I agree with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said. He is right about dualism and sovereignty. We may, indeed, debate sovereignty again tomorrow when we come to clause 1. There is a lovely accord between him and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon on the very point of sovereignty, and doubtless we will debate that again. Where I respectfully disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is in his assessment of whether the Bill will work. As drafted, this legislation is clear and unambiguous. Parliament is setting out the law clearly and it will work.
Sir William Cash
I merely repeat the point that parliamentary sovereignty has to be combined with clear and unambiguous words. The word “notwithstanding” is hallowed; it is in the withdrawal agreement of 2020 and it makes the wording absolutely clear. Otherwise it is not clear and the courts could rule against us—as they did, conversely, on the Rwanda judgment, where they agreed that clear and unambiguous words are necessary and essential with regard to claims under matters relating to this Bill.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful for the intervention, and I agree with my hon. Friend: he is absolutely right about clear and unambiguous language. However, clause 2 as drafted is clear and unambiguous; if I may say so, it is simply a different way of saying the same thing. Either we have a deeming clause that deems Rwanda to be safe, or a notwithstanding clause. Clause 2 has the joy of both a deeming clause and a notwithstanding clause. It is clear, it is unambiguous and the courts will follow it.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) passionately believes that this is the right policy, and I agree with that. He mentioned that it is important to tackle the root causes and that we must not allow this evil trade to persist, and I agree with him entirely. He asked about the courts and the tribunals, as did the Chair of the Select Committee—the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)—and my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates). A written ministerial statement was laid earlier today, and I encourage my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland to consider the detail of it. He is right that more judges are being recruited.
It is important to say that deployment of the judiciary is of course a question for the independent judiciary—that is absolutely right—but more are being identified and trained, and I encourage my right hon. Friend and other right hon. and hon. Members who mentioned that to look out for the Lord Chancellor’s written ministerial statement, published today.
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsWednesday 17th January 2024
(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 17 January 2024 - (17 Jan 2024)
Stephen Kinnock
When we enter Government, as I hope we will, everything we do will be based on a test: is it affordable, is it workable and is it legal? The legal piece has to be based on compliance with our international legal obligations. However, if one cherishes something, one also has to be open to changing and improving it. It is clear that a global conversation and a European conversation are required about the immigration position in which we find ourselves. If we, in concert with our international partners and allies, can find ways to improve the system, of course Labour would look to do that. Unfortunately, we cannot negotiate that deal from Opposition, but we will certainly prioritise that as and when we come into Government.
Stephen Kinnock
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will make a little more progress and then come back to him.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I suspect that what the hon. Lady is referring to is the statement of incompatibility with the convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 at the beginning of the Bill. Of course, that provision is there for a reason: to allow the Government, if they so choose, to act in defiance of those responsibilities. That is perfectly proper, and I will come on to explain why I think that is something the Government can properly do.
I am concerned about something a little different. Instead of saying, “We don’t think this is in compliance with international law, but we’re going to do it anyway.”, the Bill is saying, “We think this is in compliance with international law; it is down to us to decide that, and we have so decided.” That feels to me like something that we could not and should not do. It would be concerning enough, in my judgment, if this Bill only tried to deem the UK’s compliance with international law, but it also seems to say that we can deem Rwanda’s compliance with international law.
That is set out in clause 1(5)(b), which goes on to say that, for the purposes of this Act, a safe country includes, in particular, a country
“from which a person removed to that country will not be removed or sent to another country”.
So far so good; that is essential, to me, to doing what the Bill seeks to achieve. However, it goes on to say,
“in contravention of any international law”.
Again, it cannot lie in the hands of this Parliament to decide whether or not a person may be removed to another country in contravention of any international law. It goes on in sub-paragraph (b)(ii) to say that a country would be a safe country
“in which any person who is seeking asylum or who has had an asylum determination will both have their claim determined and be treated in accordance with that country’s obligations under international law.”
It seems to me that the Bill is seeking to say that, if we deem it so, not only is the UK in compliance with its international law responsibilities, but Rwanda is going to be as well. That feels to me not valid and somewhat over-ambitious.
Sir William Cash
Does my right hon. and learned Friend, who has great experience as a former Attorney General, agree that the deeming provisions under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 create a rather similar situation, because we deemed EU law to be UK law? Therefore, on the analogy he has just given, I imagine he would argue—though I think he might even have been Attorney General at that time—that that did exactly the same sort of thing, although I am listening with great interest to the more precise point he is making about the relationship with international obligations, on which I will speak later.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know, Dame Rosie, you would not want me to abuse the privilege you have given us to range slightly more widely in this debate to range quite that widely, so I will not. He is right that I am making a fairly precise point about what this language appears to me to say. I stress that I do not think it is necessary to include this language in order to achieve the objective that the Government have set in this legislation—with which I have some sympathy, although their methods make me nervous, and I make no bones about that. Worse than unnecessary, it presents some dangers that I do not think we need to present in order to achieve the Government’s objectives.
I suspect my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will tell me in a few moments’ or hours’ time that I do not need to worry about any of this. He may give two reasons for that. First, he may say that the Bill does not mean what I think it means. You will forgive me for saying this, Dame Rosie, but I am increasingly troubled that in this place we answer points such as mine by saying, “Yes, well, it doesn’t really mean that, and we don’t really mean that by it.” We should be concerned as legislators with what the language we are passing into law actually says, not what we meant to say. I am concerned that what this language says is not in accordance with what I am sure the Minister wants to do or what the Government want to do, but it might none the less have that effect, or be taken by others to mean the things that I am concerned about.
When the Bill says what a safe country is, it is potentially confusing two different things. One is deeming our own compliance with international law, which I do not think any country should be able to do, and the other is saying that Parliament resolves to do something even if it contravenes the UK’s international law obligations, which, going back to the previous intervention by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), I do think the British Parliament can do. We as a legislature can resolve to do that if we so choose.
We have to decide whether that is a wise and sensible thing to do, with all the ramifications it might bring, but as a matter of law it seems to me that the UK Parliament can, if it wishes, pass a law to say, “Despite or irrespective of our international responsibilities, this is none the less what we want to do.” That is not the same as deeming our own compliance with international law, which I worry this language almost certainly seems to do.
The point I make about the UK Parliament being able to do things even when they contravene its international responsibilities is already in the Bill and reflected in the language of clause 1(4)(b), which points out that
“the validity of an Act is unaffected by international law.”
Quite right. We can, if we so choose, deem a country a safe country for the purposes of domestic decision making if we want to. What I do not think we can or should do is legislate to say that we comply with our international law responsibilities when we do not—and when, crucially, to achieve the objective of this Bill we do not need to.
The second reason the Minister may give for why I do not need to worry myself about all this is that he may say that domestic and international law exist on different planes, and that this legislation is only targeted in any event at domestic authorities, so the Bill could not, even if it chose to try, deem our compliance with international law in actual fact. I would agree with that. It is perfectly true that domestic law and international law operate on different planes, and it is not likely that this Bill could determine any question of international law before any international tribunal.
If that is so, though, why include the language? If it does not have any meaning or legal effect, it does not serve any purpose, but I fear it may send a damaging political signal to other states. The language I am concerned about, which amendments 54 and 55 would remove, is either offensive or otiose, and in either respect the Bill would be better without it.
Sir William Cash
Without prejudice to the content of what the hon. and learned Lady is saying otherwise, may I simply say in relation to her notwithstanding clause that I am extremely glad that the Scottish eagle has landed?
Joanna Cherry
I certainly will not be supporting the other notwithstanding clauses in the Bill, but I felt that it was perhaps time that we had one that benefited Scotland for a change.
My amendments are designed to protect Scotland’s courts and constitutional tradition. They are there to ensure that asylum seekers in Scotland might still enjoy the protection of the courts from the infringement of their fundamental rights. That is what people in Scotland want, and it has been expressed repeatedly through the Scottish Parliament. I am, of course, a Scottish MP and a member of the Scottish Bar, and I am here to do what I can to protect Scotland and its legal system from the extraordinary attack on human rights and the rule of law that this Bill constitutes.
However, I am not a Scottish exceptionalist. I recognise that—as reflected in the House of Commons Library’s excellent legal briefing on the Bill, and indeed in the speech that preceded mine, by the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam—concerns about the impact of the Bill on the rule of law and the constitution are shared by many in England, including many lawyers. For every lawyer cited by Conservative Members in favour of the Bill and the draconian amendments to it, they will find two lawyers who disagree.
The Library briefing, which is an excellent summary of the different legal views on the Bill, concludes:
“Tension between the sovereignty of Parliament to legislate, and the role of the courts in enforcing the rule of law principle that executive bodies must exercise their powers within their statutory limits, may be tempered by restraint on both sides. If either the courts or Parliament ceased to exercise such restraint, significant constitutional uncertainty could result.”
I believe that if we pass the Bill, this Parliament will have ceased to exercise the restraint referred to there—it would be a major departure from such restraint. I predict that, if the Bill passes, we will see what might be an unprecedented constitutional challenge to an Act of the British Parliament.
Sir Robert Neill
I would make two points about that. In fact, I supported the noble Lord Cameron in that regard because it was a political decision. It is also worth looking at the practical politics. Although we were for a period of time at variance with the Court, no harm was done to the polity of the United Kingdom in that regard. No harm was done to the interests of the United Kingdom and no terrible international consequence for us flowed from it. I think the Court got it wrong on that occasion, and one of the problems is that there is no appeal system in the Strasbourg Court, so we have to wait until some future decision goes a different way. I think many of us take the view that, in reality, the Court as currently constituted in Strasbourg—it is perhaps less activist, if I may say so, than its predecessors—might well have found differently in the prisoner voting case. However, the fact was that UK Ministers took the decision, and they did what was right in the UK, which was supported by those in all parts of the House, and no harm was done. So the idea that some terrible consequence will flow for the UK because of the ability to seek rule 39 interim measures is just misplaced.
Sir William Cash
Would my hon. Friend reflect on this fact about prisoner voting? I discussed the matter with the noble Lord Cameron when he was Prime Minister at the time, but it was regarded by the noble Lord Clarke of Nottingham as a “particular political policy”—I think those were the words he used. How would my hon. Friend describe the issue of illegal migration? Would he not regard that as a particular but very important political policy?
Sir Robert Neill
That is why, as it happens, I will not vote against this Bill, because although I have some misgivings, there is a legitimate concern that needs to be dealt with in relation to illegal boats. However, the simple fact is that that is not a reason for the blanket derogation, or the blanket removal of ECHR protections, that is proposed in a series of amendments. That is the difference. My hon. Friend and I are at one, but sometimes a mixture of politics and law arises in these matters. The point I am making is that, frankly, if any Government want to take the political risk of ignoring an interim measure, they can do so under our law as it stands. It happens that they effectively did so on prisoner voting, so they could do that now if they wanted to. I am not going to advise on that, because one has to be very wary not to come to views that may very often not be fact-specific when individual decisions are made.
Sir William Cash
First, does my right hon. and learned Friend understand that there are those who argue that the rule 39 indications are being used by the Strasbourg Court in a way that is not binding? Has he heard that argument, and does he agree with it? Secondly, with regard to how people react to the manner in which the proposed reforms are being done, can he speak with authority—not that he does not have his own authority—by quoting to us any specific document that demonstrates that the whole thing is now more or less sewn up?
Sir Robert Buckland
I have sources that I was looking at to research this speech. I will send my hon. Friend the links that I have to the European Court web pages that deal with several meetings held in the summer and November last year where the proposals were agreed. Now, the question is implementation in 2024. The Court has not been specific about precisely when these reforms will be brought in. Therefore, now is our opportunity not just as a Parliament but as a Government, together with other member states, to say, “Look, these are welcome. Can you please bring them in?” Hopefully, it will bring them in a way that dovetails with the eventual coming into force of these provisions. My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will send that information to him.
Sir William Cash
I mentioned this question of global leadership in my speech yesterday for a very good reason. It is to do with reputation, but it is also to do with change. All over the European Union, faced with compulsory quotas and compulsory fines, countries are in a real mess. There is the charter of fundamental rights, and the EU cannot make changes without changes in constitutional law and in countries’ constitutions, and they may well have to have referenda. In this country, we are in a different position and can make changes because, in our dualist system, we are entitled to require our courts to obey the decisions of Parliament about sovereignty where clear and unambiguous wording is used. There is the difference, and that is why we can lead the world. Such negotiations are bound to be happening because my hon. Friends at the other end of the Chamber have been saying they believe there will be changes in the European convention on human rights and, for that matter, the refugee convention.
Tim Farron
Of course it is a given that the law changes, and laws change via a variety of different means, including how this place votes. Nevertheless, the UK would be seen to be choosing—in order to tackle a problem in an ineffective way—to disapply the Human Rights Act 1998 and at least to an extent not to comply with international law.
I heard all the disparaging remarks about lefty lawyers, activists, judges, foreign judges and so on, all of which demeans this place and is not what people who are supposed to uphold the constitution ought to be saying, particularly given that the majority of lawyers I have heard speaking in this debate are on the Conservative Benches; if Conservative Members want to describe themselves as lefty lawyers, that is their business, but it is not helpful. But when we have the Law Society saying that the Bill might be incompatible with our international obligations and
“sets a dangerous legal and constitutional precedent by legislating to overturn an evidence-based finding of fact by the UK’s highest court”,
we should take it seriously.
There is no doubt whatever that for us to decide to pass a law to say that Rwanda is a safe country is an overreach of Parliament, because if we have evidence to say that Rwanda is safe, present it to the court—do it in the proper way. It is dangerously authoritarian to decide on a matter of fact of law rather than presenting it before the courts. It is not only an overreach, however; it is also ridiculous. If we are going to declare Rwanda safe just because we want it to be, I declare Blackburn Rovers back in the Premier League and Alan Shearer to be 30 years younger and back in a No. 9 shirt playing up front for us—there we are, make it so—but that is clearly not the case, sadly. If there is evidence, we should present it to the court. It is ridiculous for this place to say that somehow it can declare a place safe just because it is convenient for it to do so.
We do not control migration by this kind of sophistry, but deterrence is still appropriate. People have asked what deterrence we are going to have: the deterrent is if we had a functioning asylum system where we actually returned people whose applications failed.
Tom Hunt
I will not be giving way.
I will be supporting amendment 11 in relation to the Human Rights Act. I will also support the amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark on the ECHR. I remember vividly the situation in June 2022. I also remember the referendum we had in 2016, where the majority of people in this country voted to leave the European Union. They did so because they wanted the Parliament of this country to be fully sovereign; they did not want it to be frustrated by foreign organisations, whether the EU or the ECHR. The way in which that happened in June 2022, to a policy that has majority support from most of the people in this country, was devastating.
More generally, it is important that we respect the discussions on Second Reading, when the Prime Minister said that he wanted sound international legal arguments for amendments. That bar has been met, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark has explained how that is the case. Fundamentally, I have regretfully come to the conclusion as a Member of Parliament that we should leave the ECHR. My prediction is that, in time, we will. Many of the debates associated with the ECHR are similar to the debates around Brexit. Those who originally wanted to leave the EU were branded extremists and a minority. The same arguments were made, such as, “Let’s reform it from the inside.” We will try that again with the ECHR, and I think we will be unsuccessful.
It is the supranational nature of the ECHR that I am deeply uncomfortable with. We have already seen how that operates. Some Members have made the point that it is not a foreign court because we have ownership of it. People made the same argument about the European Union, and the MEPs going to Brussels. Ultimately, when it came to that decisive referendum, most people who voted on that question disagreed with that view and we rightly left the EU. It is not right and the issue of the ECHR opens up a serious democratic deficit, given that we left the EU. The principles for why we did are live in this debate today, and we must listen.
On the issue of illegal migration, like on the issue of net legal migration, we are playing with fire. The level of frustration felt by millions of people in the country is extreme, and the warnings are there from across of the world about what happens if mainstream parties do not deal with people’s legitimate concerns about mass migration. If the Conservative party does not responsibly and robustly deal with it and finally stop the boats, the warning signs are there for what might happen.
Sir William Cash
Just to take my hon. Friend’s point, with which I completely agree, even further, does he agree that the fact that often is not mentioned is that we are a small island with a huge population and an entire infrastructure created in the 19th century? For all these reasons we have that much more pressure on our social services, our infrastructure, our planning and so forth.
Tom Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are intolerable pressures being placed on this country through mass legal migration and illegal migration. It is right that more and more of my constituents are seeing the link between that issue and pressure on public services, strains on social cohesion and other things. Immigration at sustainable levels with integration is a force for good. Immigration at unsustainable levels without integration causes intolerable troubles for the people of this country. That is something they want to guard against.
Michael Tomlinson
I will not give way.
We are unequivocal that that is simply not the case, and article 2 of the Windsor framework is not engaged. I would be happy to write further to the hon. Member for Belfast East and the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) on that point to set out further detail. I hope I can reassure the hon. Member that we have already achieved the aim he seeks.
Michael Tomlinson
I will give way, but my hon. Friend must be conscious that we are up against a very tight deadline.
Sir William Cash
On the statements he made with regard to rule 39 and so forth, can my hon. and learned Friend explain to the Committee how the Government would be able to prevent a judicial review of the decision taken by the Minister without legislation?
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend has heard what I said on that point. I respect and admire him; he knows the esteem that I have for him. We have a good-faith disagreement on the effect of clause 5, but the clause is clear: it is for a Minister to decide, and a Minister will decide.
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Home Office
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Home Office
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsWednesday 17th January 2024
(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 17 January 2024 - (17 Jan 2024)
James Cleverly
My right hon. Friend raises an important point and it gives me an opportunity to be unambiguous and clear. As drafted, as we intend this Bill to progress, it will be in complete compliance with international law. The UK takes international law seriously and the countries we choose to partner with internationally also take international law seriously.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The previous intervention was extremely apposite. Will the Foreign Secretary be kind enough to give me the advice as to why he said what he just did about no breaches of international law?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend will know that the Government do not make their legal advice public. We have put forward, of course, an explanation of our position but I am absolutely confident that we will maintain our long-standing tradition of being a country that not just abides by international law but champions and defends it.
Under our new legislation migrants will not be able to frustrate the decision to remove them to Rwanda by bringing systemic challenges about the general safety of Rwanda.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I will simply reply to the Labour party. If I vote against Third Reading this evening, I certainly have no intention of doing a single thing to support the propositions of Labour’s Front-Bench spokesman. Let me get that completely clear. Labour is not doing anything. It has no plan. I want the Bill to succeed, and if I vote against Third Reading it will be because I do not believe, to use the Home Secretary’s own words, that this is the “toughest immigration legislation” that we could produce, nor do I think we have done “whatever it takes”. I can only say that in this context, but it is about the law.
My main concern is that there will be another claim as a result of this. I do not think anybody expects anything else. When it happens it will go to the Supreme Court and the question in front of the Supreme Court will be very simple. I put that point in my speech yesterday, and I do not retract a single word. I am extremely grateful to those very senior people some members of the Government, who said to me privately that they agreed with every word I said.
I say that for this reason. If the Act of Parliament was sufficiently comprehensive, using the “notwithstanding” formula, and the words used were clear and unambiguous, then there is no doubt at all that we would win that case in the Supreme Court. Sadly, I just do not think that that is going to happen. I explained why yesterday, so there is no need or reason for me to go into it now. I have said what I have said. All I can say is that I wish the Government well, but I cannot in all conscience support the Bill, because I have set out my case and, on principle, I am not going to retract it.
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsMonday 18th March 2024
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 18 March 2024 - (18 Mar 2024)
Stephen Kinnock
We will eradicate the activity of the criminal smuggler gangs by having a proper security partnership with our European partners and allies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that his party has spent the last eight years trashing and destroying our relationships with our European partners and allies. What we would have with a Labour Government is a basis of trust to get the results that we need to see for the British people—that is what sovereignty is all about.
The entire Rwanda debacle has absorbed a vast amount of time, energy and money that should instead have been focused on taking back control of our border security from the criminal gangs who trade in human misery. Let us not forget that more than 100,000 asylum seekers have crossed in small boats since 2020, with 40,000 arriving on this Prime Minister’s watch alone. The chaos must end, and this Government are clearly unable to restore order at the border, so it is time for them to get out of the way so that Labour can get the job done.
Before I get into the substance of the amendments, I would like to pay tribute to the noble Members of the other place, who tabled them. In so doing, they were fulfilling their constitutional, democratic and patriotic duty by scrutinising and seeking to amend the Bill, just as they would with any other piece of legislation that comes before them. They have not been intimidated or sidetracked by the Prime Minister’s mistaken assertion that the Bill should have some kind of special status or treatment, which would somehow allow Ministers to railroad it through Parliament and to drive a coach and horses through Britain’s long-standing democratic conventions. Indeed, this profoundly dismissive attitude has manifested itself in the way in which the Government have point blank refused to engage with the Lords amendments. They have rejected every one of them, rather than seeking to use them and see them as a basis for negotiation and compromise.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On amendment 1, is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords, which has a significant number of Members of the other place, has explicitly stated that it is clear and unambiguous in the words used in the statute that international law gives way to the supremacy and sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament? The Committee said that in paragraph 58 of its report, which was published only last year.
Stephen Kinnock
I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the Supreme Court—the highest court of our land —has ruled unanimously and in no uncertain terms that Rwanda is not a safe country to which to send asylum seekers. I know that he is very taken with parliamentary sovereignty, and that is very important, but parliamentary sovereignty must be based on having due regard to the findings of our judiciary. It is to be exercised with caution and moderation, which is why it is so important that our colleagues in the other place have played their role.
Sir William Cash
I am extremely grateful, because this question goes right to the heart of the matter. Paragraph 144 of the Rwanda judgment itself is unequivocal: the President of the Supreme Court ruled to dismiss one of the cases— that of ASM, an Iraqi—on very specific grounds. He said that the consequence of the sovereignty of Parliament with respect to the legislation—the immigration Acts and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023—was that the Court had to dismiss his claim. The supremacy of Parliament prevailed in that judgment for the very reason I have just given, as set out in paragraph 144 under the principle of legality.
Stephen Kinnock
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but at the end of the day, we cannot legislate to turn dogs into cats. We cannot legislate for the sky to be green and the grass to be blue. That is a basic tenet of the respect with which our institutions should be treated, and putting this kind of absurd legislation before us is frankly turning our institutions into a laughing stock. I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman keeps that in mind.
Let us be clear: the only special or unique status that can be found in the Rwanda Bill and the treaty that accompanies it is in its extortionate implementation costs, its unlawful nature and its glaring unworkability. Indeed, as I turn to address the details of the amendments, it is important to point out that since the Bill was last debated in this place, even more evidence of the astonishing unaffordability of the scheme has come to light. This failing scheme was already costing the British taxpayer almost £400 million, even though not a single asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda, but every new detail is more astounding than the last. We recently learned that the first 300 asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda would cost the British taxpayer an extra £200 million, earning an invoice of £570 million from the Rwandan Government for just 1% of the 30,000 asylum seekers who crossed in small boats last year. That is almost £2 million per asylum seeker. Let that sink in for a moment—£2 million to send just one asylum seeker from the UK to Rwanda, and then another £182,000 per person on top of that. In comparison, processing an asylum seeker in the UK costs just £21,000.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Lady is correct: it is a gimmick. It has no basis in fact and there a lot of doubt about whether it will even work, but it appeals to a certain section that the Government think need to be appealed to. It is not so much a dog whistle as a foghorn, but it is definitely there.
To continue with the point about Afghans, the Migration Observatory at Oxford University has pointed out that more Afghans have come by small boats than in any of the UK’s schemes. In fact, between 1 January and 30 June last year, nine times as many Afghans arrived by small boats as under the routes that the Government specifically set up. The ARAP and ACRS are failing to deal with this issue; they are supposed to be safe and legal routes that prevent and dissuade people from getting in small boats, but they do not work. They take too long, they are inefficient, and they do not provide the security that people require to come here, so people take things into their own hands. Who can blame them in the circumstances?
I have seen far too many cases in my constituency. When Afghanistan fell, we had about 80 people in touch who had relatives in Afghanistan, but I know of only a handful who managed to get their family over here. That is despicable. I worry about those people all the time. I do not know where they are, and I do not know whether even their families know where they are. It is telling that so many people will come by small boats because they cannot rely on UK Government schemes to get them here safely.
The Bill is full of contradictions: it is a deterrent, but Rwanda is also safe; it undermines our own obligations internationally and our domestic courts while telling Rwanda that it must keep to its obligations; it is not tough enough for the far-right of the Tory party but too harsh for the more reasonable wing. It is a circus. It is a deflection from a broken Home Office that cannot even get the basics right—that is beset by delays, under investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office and wasting money hand over fist.
The Rwanda Bill is not Scotland’s values. In Scotland, we see the humanity in people. An alternative is set out clearly in the Scottish Government’s papers on the issue. We cannot trust the failed Westminster parties to dismantle the hostile environment that they created. Scotland must have these powers urgently. We must have independence to play our part in the world.
Sir William Cash
I signed the Government’s motion to reject Lords amendment 1 and am happy to support them in it. The fact is that the Lords amendment would add to clause 1(1) the words:
“full compliance with domestic and international law.”
The problem is that that would make the clause one of the most serious and dangerous clauses I have seen in recent statutory history. It would contradict one of the most fundamental principles of our constitutional law.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration said, we have a dualist system—I have referred to it several times in the past—and it is fundamental. That is unlike Germany, as article 26 of its constitution states that international law is the most fundamental part of its constitutional arrangements; articles 65 and 66 of the Dutch constitution contain a similar provision. We have a dualist system, and the sovereignty of our Parliament is imperative. Over many generations—in fact, going back centuries—all the court cases, whether in the House of Lords or in the Supreme Court, make it absolutely clear that where words used in statute are clear and unambiguous, and where Parliament’s explicit intention is clear, parliamentary sovereignty means that the supremacy of Parliament can override international law and should do so. The “should do so” is equally important. Indeed, I would go further and say that in our courts, sovereignty—with those clear and unambiguous words—trumps international law.
As I mentioned in an intervention on the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), the House of Lords Constitution Committee, including the likes of the noble Lord Falconer, Lord Robertson and various others, clearly stated in paragraph 58 of its report last year on the rule of law:
“Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can legislate contrary to the UK’s obligations under international law.”
That fundamentally disagrees with what is contained in Lords amendment 1, so what—if I may say—the heck is going on? The Lords had a very important decision to take, and paragraphs 54 to 60 of that report contain the very carefully detailed reasoning that led the Committee to the conclusion I have just read out.
I have mentioned in a previous debate the judgment of Lord Hoffmann in a case called R v. Lyons. I want to quote from it, because he clearly says that international law is trumped by the supremacy of the sovereignty of Parliament. Parliament has to be the key determinant. What he says is so important—I would not bother making my point in this way if it were not for this amendment. I am not sure whether the Leader of the Opposition really intends to achieve the objectives set out in clause 1; it worries me very much indeed if he is complicit in this operation. This was a Labour amendment and had a majority of 102 in the House of Lords, so we are going to have to take it seriously, which means we also have to deal with it seriously.
Lord Hoffmann said,
“English courts will not (unless the statute expressly so provides) be bound to give effect to interpretations of the treaty by an international court, even though the United Kingdom is bound by international law to do so.”
He went on to say,
“The sovereign legislator in the United Kingdom is Parliament. If Parliament has plainly laid down the law, it is the duty of the courts to apply it, whether that would involve the Crown in breach of an international treaty or not.”
Nothing could be more explicit. Nothing could be clearer.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Sir William Cash
No. Amendment 1, put forward by the House of Lords, completely contradicts that principle, because in its wording it makes both domestic law and international law combined a matter of full compliance. I would go so far as to say that it is impossible in many circumstances to actually arrive at a point where there could be full compliance with domestic and international law according to our constitutional principles.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for again making a powerful argument about the sovereignty of Parliament, and he will understand why the sovereignty of Parliament is so fundamental. In democratic polity, Parliament speaks for the people and is given legitimacy by the people, and lawmakers here are answerable to the people. International obligations and treaties matter, but they do not matter more than the people’s will.
Sir William Cash
I am bound to say, with no disrespect to the noble Lords, who passed this amendment with a majority of 102, that they do not have that legitimacy because constitutionally they are unelected; that is a fundamental point that needs to be taken into account. They have a function to perform, but it is our intention and the Government’s clear, stated objective, to overturn the amendment. The issue goes much further and deeper, in my opinion, than just the question of the Rwanda Bill, but it is in the Bill. In my 40 years in this place, or in my constitutional legal practice beforehand, I have never seen any statute that purports to include words that are so all-embracing as the words in the amendment. I do not know who devised the amendment but, with a majority of 102, we had better look to our merits and make quite sure that we turn it down.
The people who are behind amendment 1 are internationalists. That worries me, too. There is a cohort of internationalists in various Government Departments: the Home Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in particular. Being a mere Back Bencher, I am more than happy to castigate those who want to internationalise the sovereignty of our country. I had a bit of trouble—a local difficulty, as one might say—over our leaving the European Union. These internationalists wanted us to be part and parcel of this great European Union, and I have never been happier in my life than on 23 June 2016, when we decided to reject the proposals, as I had been arguing for—shall we say, for a year or two?
The European Union itself is in a terrible bind over the global problem of illegal migration. I have not yet discovered what Germany will do about its own constitution in this respect. It is not just the European Union but the United States of America—day in, day out we see the problems they face on the Texas border. It is beyond imagination. What that country is trying to do about the numbers of people flowing in raises all the same kind of questions on the international refugee convention. This issue affects not just the United Kingdom, but we are taking a stand. I say to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that by rejecting the amendment we will enhance our international reputation—by using our unwritten constitution to make it clear that what the people want and what the principles of common sense demand is that we just cannot allow illegal migration to overtake our entire national interest.
I have been to Madrid for a summit of the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of the Parliaments of the European Union, as the British representative and Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, and I hope to go back again in a few weeks’ time. There was sheer consternation at the last conference, which is comprised of the chairmen of the European affairs or scrutiny committees of the 27 member states; they were appalled by the proposal by a majority vote to accept quotas and compulsory fines if they were to have any sensible arrangement in the European Union, which they cannot have because it is inconsistent with their constitutional arrangements. It is inconsistent with the charter of fundamental rights. That is why we need to focus on the European convention on human rights in this particular context. I am not going to make a speech about that, because that would be outside the terms of this debate.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
It is almost two years since the Rwanda scheme was first announced by the then Home Secretary in April 2022. This is now the third piece of legislation connected with that scheme. When this Bill had its Second Reading in the Commons at the end of last year, I noted that the challenge of stopping dangerous boat crossings was real and, despite what the Minister says, I think it is one that every Member of this House wishes to address.
The Home Affairs Committee’s report on channel crossings was clear:
“There is no magical single solution to dealing with irregular migration.”
Instead, our report recommended:
“Detailed, evidence-driven, fully costed and fully tested policy initiatives…to achieve…incremental change”.
It also recommended:
“Close co-operation with international partners”.
Those remarks are still relevant, and it is interesting to note the new tone of the Home Secretary in saying that this policy on Rwanda is now only a part of the solution to small boat crossings. As we know, however, it is very expensive and uses up a huge amount of time in this place and a great deal of political capital.
In the absence of any pre-existing evidence that the UK-Rwanda partnership will deliver on its primary objective to deter small boat crossings, the need for careful, considered and responsible planning and lawmaking is even more acute, and that is what the amendments under consideration today seek to address. I remind the House that the Lords as a revising Chamber have an important job to do in scrutinising legislation and improving it where necessary, and I think it is helpful for this House to see what improvements the other place is suggesting to legislation from this place.
Amendment 1 adds a requirement to maintain
“full compliance with domestic and international law.”
I note that the Minister today and the Minister in the other place have argued that the Bill is already compliant with the rule of law and that it is predicated on compliance with international law in the form of the treaty. The Government commented:
“The treaty sets out the international legal commitments that the UK and Rwandan governments have made consistent with their shared standards associated with asylum and refugee protection.”
This is the same treaty that the House of Lords agreed a motion not to ratify on 22 January. It is the same treaty for which the Government refused to allow time for Members of this House to debate and reach a view on, despite a request from the Home Affairs Committee.
The time period for objections is over and the Government can ratify the treaty as long as they lay a statement setting out why they are doing so despite the decision of the Lords. If the Government want us to accept their assurances that the treaty is itself evidence of compliance with international law, they should really have given this House the opportunity to debate that treaty. In the absence of such an opportunity, amendment 1 would provide the reassurance of compliance with domestic and international law. As the Government insist that the treaty and Bill already satisfy the criteria, it stands to reason that there should not really be any issue with the amendment.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am going to carry on. The hon. Gentleman spoke at length, and I want to get through a number of amendments.
I turn to amendments 2 and 3, which also relate to the treaty. In the other place, Lord Hope argued that Rwanda being declared a safe country should be dependent on the arrangements provided for in the treaty being “fully implemented” and “adhered to in practice”, with amendment 3 setting out what that would actually look like and giving the independent monitoring committee a significant role in reporting on this. In response, the Minister in the Lords set out that the Government would ratify the treaty only
“once we agree with Rwanda that all necessary implementation is in place”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1358.]
As we know, the Bill will come into force only once the treaty has been ratified. Again, it would have been helpful and beneficial for this House to have had the opportunity to debate the treaty, yet scrutiny of its provisions did not happen in the Commons, just as financial details of the UK-Rwanda partnership had been held back from Parliament until very recently. As highlighted in last week’s estimates day debate on asylum and migration, the Home Office repeatedly refused the Home Affairs Committee’s requests for basic financial information about the scheme, and disclosed some of the costs only after our Committee joined forces with the Public Accounts Committee to request a National Audit Office investigation.
We now know that the core costs are very expensive: £370 million for the economic transformation and integration fund, an additional £20,000 per individual relocated, a further £120 million once 300 people have been relocated and, on top of all that, £150,874 for each individual relocated to Rwanda. There is a direct cost to the Home Office of £28 million by the end of 2023-24, with £1 million per year in staff costs and £11,000 for the flight cost of each individual relocated, and I still do not know whether the Home Office has been able to enter into a contract with an airline to deliver the removals to Rwanda. Crucially, though, we still have not been told the costs for implementing the provisions in the treaty, such as a new asylum appeals body. Is there money available, and has it been allocated to pay for that?
We already know that the Home Office budget is under acute pressure. On 1 February this year, the Home Secretary requested an emergency drawdown of £2.6 billion from the reserves, because the Department had run out of money before the supplementary estimates had been approved. With serious questions still to answer about how the Government will fund the implementation of the treaty, and about its practical implementation, I believe that the amendments help to provide some necessary assurances that the Government have hitherto failed to provide to Parliament.
Amendments 4 and 5 would make it possible to argue that Rwanda is not a safe country on the presentation of “credible evidence to the contrary” and would allow appeals to be brought on that basis. Responding on behalf of the Government, the Minister in the Lords said:
“We have been clear that the purpose of this legislation is to stop the boats, and to do that we must create a deterrent that shows that, if you enter the UK illegally, you will not be able to stay.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1378.]
The Home Affairs Committee has repeatedly asked both Ministers and senior officials what evidence there is for the deterrent effect of the Rwanda scheme. The permanent secretary, Sir Matthew Rycroft, required a ministerial direction for the scheme, because there was no evidence that it would provide value for money. When he gave evidence before the Committee last year, he said that this was because
“the value-for-money judgment depends on the amount of deterrence that the policy will produce.”
He noted that although the number of people crossing the channel is falling, it
“is very hard to tell how much of that is the possibility of being relocated to Rwanda, particularly, as you suggest, before the first flights to Rwanda have taken off.”
The truth is that we actually do not have any idea whether the policy that this Bill facilitates will have the deterrent effect that the Minister cites. As I highlighted in Committee of the whole House, it does not seem sensible for the Government to propose that the status of Rwanda as a safe country should be fixed for ever more, which would, by extension, make Rwanda the only country on Earth in which nothing ever happens or changes. Amendments enabling the presentation of evidence relating to those changes and their implications for safety in Rwanda therefore seem eminently reasonable and, indeed, necessary.
Amendment 6 deletes clause 4 and introduces into the Bill a new clause that allows much wider grounds for legal challenge. The Home Affairs Select Committee has always recognised that appropriate legal challenge is a necessary part of any functioning asylum system. Amendment 7 disapplies section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, meaning that people claiming to be children could appeal against a decision that they are over 18. The noble Baroness Lister, who tabled that amendment, explained that it was intended to
“minimise the risk of any unaccompanied child being sent to Rwanda”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1577.]
During the Home Affairs Committee’s channel crossings inquiry, we heard multiple examples of safeguarding processes failing across various parts of the asylum system, including cases of children being mistaken for adults. Section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act refers to the process of age assessment in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The Committee’s channel crossings report noted that that Act contains a number of provisions relating to age assessment, including a new national age assessment board and powers for the Home Secretary to make regulations specifying scientific methods for age assessments. Our report notes:
“The provisions are controversial because there is broad consensus that age assessment should not rely exclusively, or for some stakeholders, at all, on analyses of the skeleton or the teeth.”
I am concerned that without the amendment tabled by Baroness Lister, the Bill could produce a situation where a child is wrongly assessed as being an adult and sent to Rwanda.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir William Cash
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I in no way wish to seem churlish, but the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) refused to accept an intervention from me on the grounds that I had talked for too long. She has just managed to exceed the length of my speech by five minutes—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that that is not even a nice try. I call Alexander Stafford.
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone) Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsMonday 15th April 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Message as at 15 April 2024 - (15 Apr 2024)
Stephen Kinnock
There is a clear choice between the common sense, hard graft and positive international co-operation set out in Labour’s plan to deal with this issue, and the headline-chasing gimmicks and empty gestures that are symbolised by the Rwanda policy. Politics is about choices; the Government have taken their choice and we have taken ours.
In that spirit, Lords amendment 1B is a Labour Front-Bench amendment that places a responsibility on the Government to have due regard for its current obligations under domestic and international law. Lords amendments 3B and 3C, in the name of the noble Lord Hope, together state that Rwanda may be considered a safe country only if and when the measures set out in the Rwanda treaty have been fully implemented and the monitoring committee has established that that is the case. The Government claim that the measures in the treaty address concerns in the Supreme Court’s recent unanimous ruling, so there is absolutely no reason for Ministers to refuse to accept Lord Hope’s amendments.
Finally, Lords amendment 6B, in the name of the noble Baroness Chakrabarti, allows Ministers, officials and courts to consider whether Rwanda is safe on a case-by-case basis. Given that the Government have accepted that some appeals will be allowed, we see no reason for them to reject this amendment.
I hope that colleagues from across the House will join Labour in voting for all the amendments. Of course, the amendment are no more than an exercise in damage limitation; the fundamental problem is that this hare-brained Rwanda policy is breaking all records for being the most unworkable and worst value for money policy in the history of the Home Office. But there is an alternative. In addition to our policy to go after the criminal smuggler gangs, we will deliver our backlog clearance plan to get asylum seekers out of expensive asylum hotels by surging decision makers and caseworkers to the Home Office, and by creating a new returns and enforcement unit with 1,000 dedicated staff focused on the faster removal of those with no right to be here, including failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals.
The Government are failing on all fronts. Despite their misleading boasts about progress, the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), admitted today that there are still almost 300 asylum hotels in operation. They are returning 44% fewer failed asylum seekers compared with 2010, when the last Labour Government left office, and 27% fewer foreign criminals. The number of small boat crossings has gone up again year on year—January to March figures—and the Government have no plan for the 99% who cannot be sent to Rwanda. We need Labour’s plans to smash the criminal smuggler gangs, save lives in the channel and strengthen our border security. We need Labour’s plans for faster processing, the end of hotel use and the removal of people who have no right to stay in the UK, and we need a Labour Government to deliver a firm, fair and well-managed asylum system that works for Britain.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I do not really feel that there is anything terribly useful I can say at this stage—I have heard all this before. The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who speaks for the Opposition, is simply repeating what he has said before. Not only that; it is perfectly apparent that these amendments are just wrecking amendments, and the hon. Gentleman has not even addressed the arguments about international law. He knows perfectly well—because he cannot answer my questions on this issue—that we have a dualist system, and if we decide to legislate in our own Parliament, the courts themselves will implement that legislation.
The real point is this: let us get this Bill done, and let us get the House of Lords to calm down a bit. At the same time, let us wait for what is inevitably going to be another claim and then see the judgment of the Supreme Court on the wording of this Bill, provided that it is clear and unambiguous. That is all I need to say. I may come back again, however, if the Lords insist again on these ridiculous amendments.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The hypocrisy goes even further than that: this Government expect Rwanda to uphold all of its agreements and laws internationally and domestically, while specifically setting out to breach their own laws and obligations through this legislation. It is absolutely ludicrous.
Lords amendments 3B and 3C state that Rwanda
“will be a safe country when the arrangements provided for in the Rwanda Treaty have been fully implemented and for so long as they continue to be so.”
That question of how long those arrangements continue to be implemented is just as critical as whether Rwanda implements the measures we have just discussed, because through this legislation, the Government are stating that Rwanda is safe forever—in perpetuity. Nobody can say that of any country in the world at any point, so it is really quite bizarre to legislate specifically that Rwanda, uniquely, is safe forever and ever.
It is quite reasonable of the Lords to say,
“The Rwanda Treaty will cease to be treated as fully implemented if Parliament decides, on the advice of the Monitoring Committee, that the provisions of the treaty are no longer being adhered to in practice.”
There should be a check on that. The Government should not fear that; if they truly and deeply believe that the agreement will be adhered to, there is surely no harm in scrutinising it. The House of Lords International Agreements Committee has said that the treaty is
“unlikely to result in fundamental change in the short term”,
and the UK Supreme Court pointed out in paragraph 87 of its judgment that Rwanda refouled at least six people while the treaty was under negotiation. If that does not raise alarm bells with the Government about Rwanda’s ability to adhere to the treaty, I do not think anything will.
Lords amendment 6B deals with domestic law. It is not about international courts, foreign courts and foreign judges—as if that were a bad thing, and as if we do not send people to sit on those courts ourselves—but the integrity of our own courts and tribunals, of the UK-based judges and decision makers who the Home Office employs to do their job and who this legislation undermines. The amendment says that
“Section 2 does not prevent…the Secretary of State or an immigration officer from deciding…whether the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country for the person in question or for a group of persons to which that person belongs”.
That is quite reasonable: we should look at the evidence before coming to decisions. The amendment asks that the courts and tribunals be able to do their job, not to ignore the evidence or, as others have described, to engage in a legal fantasy where they cannot look at the evidence—cannot see it, cannot hear it, and cannot speak out about what they know to be true—because that is quite unreasonable.
Alison Thewliss
If the hon. Gentleman thinks that our own domestic judges should not be allowed to make decisions on these issues, I would be very interested to hear his point.
Sir William Cash
I was going to point out that section 57 of the Immigration Act 2023, to which the hon. Lady refers, makes the perfectly reasonable point that the courts must take account of the facts. That is the key question, and I did not hear her say that; it is something that is indisputable and, in my opinion, unassailable. If there were a question of fact regarding age or any other matter that falls within the framework of this amendment, the courts should surely be entitled to deal with those facts, but not to deal with the questions to which the hon. Lady has just referred.
Alison Thewliss
This legislation inhibits the ability to look at facts, and I think that is quite a dangerous road to go down. I do not think that that is really what the Government ought to be doing in any circumstance. No matter how much they may wish their will upon the courts, they should not be doing this in legislation. It is completely wrong.
Sir Robert Buckland
I will try to beat the extraordinary record of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who spoke for a princely two minutes. I am grateful to him for setting that new record—his personal best, I think. I will deal with the amendments in turn, but first return to the theme of clause 1, which I have previously warmed to, and which I think is an abomination. It is exactly the worst sort of legislative drafting, and we should be discouraging it. At best, it is declaratory legislation, which is never helpful, and at worst it sets up all sorts of potential legal arguments. The attempt by the Lords to amend it probably makes the situation even worse, which is why I will not support Lords amendment 1.
Sir William Cash
I returned to the Chamber especially to hear my right hon. and learned Friend, and I was delighted to hear what he just said. At last, he has seen the light.
Sir Robert Buckland
I have always walked in sunlight; it is others who have perhaps walked through a veil of shadows. We will draw a veil over that. In the spirit of my hon. Friend’s helpful intervention, I have mentioned to him that I thought that clause 5 was unnecessary. It is even more unnecessary now, because the reforms that I referred to in a previous speech on the Bill about rule 39 have now been clarified by practice direction. The threshold that the European Court will apply will be, again, a much higher one. I therefore think that the occasions where we could see it invoked in the Rwanda case would be vanishingly small—in fact, non-existent. It seems to me that any harm that might be judged to have been caused is clearly revocable in the form of a return of those individuals from Rwanda. That, frankly, should have been the position the last time round; the reforms of the European Court make that even clearer.
That makes a powerful general point, which supports the excellent arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) about the direction of travel of the Court. I strongly agree with him about the recent climate change decision, which was a wrong turn. We should be very much going back to fundamental human rights, and not talking about socioeconomic rights or trying to make everything into some form of right. Surely it is better to legislate for statutory duties and obligations by public bodies, rather than creating nebulous rights that then become the province of the courts. Herein lies the difficulty that we still encounter in the second batch of amendments—Lords amendments 3B and 3C—which I am still minded to support.
Whether we like it or not, the Supreme Court assessed evidence and substituted its own view for that of the decision makers. The noble Lord Howard of Lympne made a powerful speech in the other place about the wisdom or otherwise of going down that road. I agree with a lot of what the noble Lord said. I do not like it when I see courts of higher record in effect relitigating matters of evidence, which is what the Supreme Court did, but that is the situation that we have. That is why the Bill has come forward, and my abiding concern about deeming provisions, which I accept are not unprecedented, is that they should match reality.
That is why I press my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister to answer some of the points made in the other place about the progress being made by the Government of Rwanda, not only in legislating for its treaty obligations—it has a monist system, so the treaty is already in force—but in carrying out the obligations it agreed to in the treaty, namely the reform of its appeal system and the use of trained advisers. Those are all measures that would go a huge way to reassuring not just me but any court that might be seized of this matter in the near future that all is proceeding well. The Scottish Lord Advocate seemed to concede in the other place that there needed to be full treaty implementation before the treaty was ratified. If that is the case, we are arguing over little. That is why I still commend those amendments.
I will now deal with the next questions, which relate to the arguments again trenchantly put by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. I agree with him about the danger of proxy judicial reviews based on the Children Act 1989 and care legislation. We need to take great care about that. Like him, I am not persuaded that there is merit in supporting the Lords amendments on that issue.
I am also encouraged—though still concerned—about the modern-day slavery position. I am encouraged that here alone in the Government’s response to the Lords amendments, they have come up with an amendment in lieu: amendment (a) to Lords amendment 9. I am prepared to support that, bearing in mind the sensitive and important nature of this legislation and the need to avoid us riding a coach and horses through the progress we have made, in terms of this country’s leadership on modern-day slavery. I am prepared to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt and support the amendment in lieu.
My abiding concern remains for a class of people who served our country, who endured great danger in Afghanistan, who still find themselves in danger in a third country—namely Pakistan—and who may well fall foul of an entirely unintended consequence as a result of this legislation, however well intentioned it may be. That is why I am still not persuaded on Lords amendment 10B. The Government have moved on that—we are in an iterative process with the Lords messages—and I agree with the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who reminded us of the invaluable role that the deliberative Chamber has in making sure that legislation is tested and up to the level of events.
We should not ignore what was said in the Lords about the evidential situation in Rwanda. That is the reality, and that is why when we pass legislation here, we should do everything we can to avoid legislative fiction. It is not good law. It creates a glass jaw, which can be broken by litigation and by judicial challenge, and we find the courts once again back in a position where I do not think any of us, least of all Conservative constitutionalists, want to see them. Let us legislate with care on this matter, and let us get it right.
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Home Office
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Home Office
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsWednesday 17th April 2024
(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Message as at 17 April 2024 - (17 Apr 2024)
Michael Tomlinson
I know my right hon. Friend has taken a close interest in the Bill since the outset, and he is right. The amendments fall into two categories: those that are simply unnecessary and those that are worse than unnecessary. The second group are wrecking amendments deliberately designed to prevent the very things that the Bill was designed to do—namely, stopping the boats and getting the planes off the ground.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has previously accused me of repeating myself from time to time—heaven forfend—but he is right, because our approach is justified as a matter of parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional propriety. Indeed, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) has even said that it is not unprecedented, and he is right. It also meets our international obligations.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I reciprocate the Minister’s comment because, in so far as I may have rather infelicitously suggested that he has repeated himself, I have to confess that I, too, have repeated myself. [Hon. Members: “No!] Yes, and I have done so for extremely good reasons.
My amendment, which I will not go into now, received huge support in this House but was not accepted by the Government. It still presents a serious question that has to be answered. Going back to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said, there will come a time when this Bill is passed, hopefully in the immediate future, after which it will receive Royal Assent. At that very moment, as sure as anything, a claim will be made straightaway by Matrix Chambers, or by one of the other doughty chambers or whoever. The question will then be what the Supreme Court is going to do about it. That is the subject to which I keep returning.
As the Minister knows only too well, when we said that we were concerned that the Bill will not work, it was not because we did not want it to work; it was the exact opposite. We want it to work, but given that the Opposition are still going on about international law, we need to be sure that the wording is clear and unambiguous so that the Court rules in the Government’s favour. If not, it is all over.
Michael Tomlinson
Once again, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has a tendency to repeat himself from time to time, as he admits, but he is right to do so. He has previously mentioned paragraph 144 of the Supreme Court’s judgment, which I can cite in full:
“in any event, the principle of legality does not permit a court to disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention such as that with which we are concerned in the present case.”
It has been our joint endeavour to ensure that this legislation is clear and unambiguous.
On the treaty’s implementation, I reiterate that clause 9 clearly sets out that the Bill’s provisions come into force when the treaty enters into force, and that the treaty enters into force when the parties have completed their internal procedures. We will ratify the treaty only once we agree with Rwanda that all the necessary implementation is in place for both countries to comply with the obligations under the treaty.
The monitoring committee, as I told the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), will undertake daily monitoring of the partnership for at least the first three months to ensure rapid identification and response to any issues. This enhanced phase will ensure that comprehensive monitoring and reporting takes place in real time.
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.
Sir William Cash
Given that the noble Lord Coaker has brought this forward in one shape or another several times, and given that it is central to the debate, in the light of what I said in my earlier intervention, would I be right in thinking that the Leader of the Opposition supports the amendment? If so, why?
Sir William Cash
I will be brief and focus entirely on Lord Coaker’s amendment 1D, which I have already mentioned in interventions. The problem with the wording that he put forward in debate is one of disingenuously mixing apples and pears. I want to know whether the Leader of the Opposition is also behind the amendment, because it is much more substantial than its predecessor. It is actually a change in Labour policy as well. The noble Lord Irvine, Tony Blair as Prime Minister and Jack Straw all agreed that the sovereignty of Parliament, where words are clear and unambiguous, prevails.
The bottom line is that that is exactly what we are dealing with here. I applaud the idea of maintaining international law—I have never taken a different view—but in his speech Lord Coaker compared what is going on in the middle east to the illegal war in Ukraine and the Houthis in the Red sea. He fails to appreciate that those situations are separate to this issue, and I am raising this as a matter of principle and constitutional propriety. Those are exclusively matters of prerogative, whereas in this instance we are dealing with an issue of sovereignty and the clear and unambiguous words that appear in statute, as Lord Hoffmann made clear when he distinguished between treaties and statutes in relation to the case of Regina v. Lyons, which I have referred to previously.
The position is basically and simply this: I stand by what I have said on this subject in the past. I sincerely trust that the Court will agree that these words are clear and unambiguous.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Government’s motion to disagree with Lords amendment 1D is a motion to disagree with the Government’s obligation in relation to the Bill to have due regard for international law and the Children Act 1989, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Modern Slavery Act 2015. If the Government are confident that the Rwanda scheme will be fully compliant with international law and the aforementioned domestic law, I do not understand why they are rejecting this amendment again.
The motion to disagree with Lords amendment 3E would scrap the requirement inserted by the Lords that Rwanda be treated as a safe country only if and when protections contained in the treaty are judged by the independent monitoring committee to have been implemented and to remain implemented. Surely Lords amendment 3E is an entirely proper and legal amendment if the Government deem that the measure in their own treaty is necessary? Given that Members had no opportunity to debate that treaty prior to ratification, the amendment would at least provide some reassurance that the protections it contains will be put into practice.
The motion to disagree with Lords amendment 6D is a motion to deny individual grounds for legal challenge that the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country for the person in question or for a group of persons, or that there is a real risk that Rwanda will remove or send those persons to another state. The Home Affairs Committee has always been clear that there has to be the opportunity for appropriate legal challenge as a necessary part of our fair asylum system.
I listened very carefully to the Minister’s assurances about the specified category that could be used in the future, but amendment 10D sets out very clearly why such provisions should be included on the face of the Bill and our obligations to those who have helped us and our armed forces overseas. That amendment would be the right thing to add to the Bill.
William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
William Cash ExcerptsMonday 22nd April 2024
(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Message as at 22 April 2024 - (22 Apr 2024)
Michael Tomlinson
As ever, I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his engagement, both inside and outside the Chamber. He has been a regular attender at these ping-pong sessions. The treaty is the operating legal instrument between the two international bodies, the United Kingdom and Rwanda. That is the status of that treaty. This Bill brings it into effect in law in this country. He knows about dealing with the system of dualism. In fact, he has appeared in the Supreme Court arguing these very points, so he knows in detail the differences between a treaty and an Act of Parliament. As I set out, there is no obligation within the treaty. It is plainly written in article 4(1) that the
“United Kingdom shall not be obliged to make any request for relocation under this Agreement.”
That means that the Government would not be obliged to relocate individuals under the terms of the treaty if, for example, there had been unexpected changes of circumstances. I know that that is something my right hon. and learned Friend has been concerned about.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Would my right hon. and learned Friend also care to note that Lord Hoffman, in the case of R v. Lyons—in relation to a European Court of Human Rights case—was unequivocal when he said that a treaty was not the same as a statute, and that it is the statute that prevails? When a statute is made and the words are clear and unambiguous, it follows that the courts will obey what the Act sets out, which is exactly the position in this case.
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend has also been a consistent member of these ping-pong sessions and he has consistently cited paragraph 144 of the Supreme Court judgment. He knows that I agree with him on this point, and that I firmly believe that this legislation, as drafted, is clear and unambiguous. I hope that that reassures him.
Turning back to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), there are procedures already in place under the terms of the treaty to monitor the safety of Rwanda for those who are relocated there. I can reassure him and the House that we have already established the right mechanisms so that, should the situation ever arise, the Government will respond as necessary. This would include a range of options to respond, including, as he knows, primary legislation if required.
Implementation continues and I can now confirm that last Friday the Rwandan Parliament passed its domestic legislation to implement its new asylum system. The partnership is one important component of a much broader bilateral relationship, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has recently reminded us. This is a migration and economic development partnership, and I would like to put on record my thanks to all officials, including those in the Government of Rwanda, for their hard work in implementing the treaty and delivering this crucial partnership.