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.
5.30 pm
I wrote to the Prime Minister many months ago and sent him a paper of seven pages of breaches of international law by countries from all over the world, including in the European Union—France, Denmark, there were so many of them. It was not seven pages of arguments; it was seven pages, each line of which contained breaches of international law by the legion, so what are we worrying about? Get on with it! We must make sure that we reject this amendment and do not allow the Lords, if they come back again on ping-pong, to think that they are going to get away with it. We want to be very firm about this. We have a dualist system. We have sovereignty of Parliament, and we have an elected Parliament. We have our voters’ wishes to take into account and we should stick by them and do nothing else.