I rise to support the Lords amendments. Lords amendments 9 and 10 because they are basic humanitarian amendments designed to exempt from the process of being sent to Rwanda the victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, as well as our agents—our allies—who have supported His Majesty’s armed forces overseas and persons who have been employed or indirectly contracted to provide services to the UK. It would be shameful if this House did not support those amendments.
I will direct most of my remarks to Lords amendments 1 to 6. Lords amendment 1 relates to whether the Bill is fully compliant with the rule of law, and Lords amendments 2 to 6 broadly deal with the issue of the safety of Rwanda. As has been adverted to earlier in the debate, I visited Rwanda last month as part of the Joint Committee on Human Rights delegation. We will be reporting in due course on our findings as part of our inquiry into the human rights of asylum seekers. Therefore, although I am Chair of the Committee, any comments that I make today are in a personal capacity, because the Committee has not yet deliberated.
I am firmly of the view that Rwanda cannot be described as a safe country for the United Kingdom to send asylum seekers to. That is based on what I observed there, but also based on objective evidence about such arrangements as presently exist in Rwanda for asylum seekers—not refugees on their borders, but asylum seekers—the degree of expertise among its immigration officers, lawyers and judiciary, and, crucially, evidence that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has received about the state of human rights in Rwanda, and perhaps, most importantly, information, collated by the Home Office, which I referred to earlier, about the state of human rights in Rwanda. I will come on to that in a moment.
When we were in Rwanda, we met many Government officials and organisations, most of whom meet with Government approval, and naturally they had a good story to tell us. Like the Supreme Court, I believe that they are in good faith, but we need to weigh that against the evidence of what we have heard from others, the
evidence collated by the Home Office about human rights abuses in Rwanda and also a recognition of how long it will take Rwanda to put in place the arrangements required by the fresh treaty, and for them to bed down. In connection with that, I remind Members of this House what the House of Lords International Agreements Committee said when it undertook its scrutiny of the new treaty in January. It said:
“While the Treaty might in time provide the basis for such an assessment”—
of Rwanda as a safe country—
“if it is rigorously implemented, as things stand the arrangements it provides for are incomplete. A significant number of further legal and practical steps are required under the treaty which will take time”.
The International Agreements Committee listed those. It went on to say that
“the arrangements put in place by the Treaty need time to bed in to demonstrate that they operate in practice. The Home Office has been unable to offer any clear timeline for implementation, but we”—
the House of Lords International Agreements Committee—
“agree with the evidence we received that the Treaty is unlikely to change the position in Rwanda in the short to medium term.”