Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between William Cash and Kevin Foster

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

[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.