I do not have time to get into redesigning the system, but—[Interruption.] Well, during our inquiry, as the hon. Lady will recall, the Committee heard very detailed evidence about what might be a reasonable number, and how the number we take compares with the number of refugees in the world. We heard very detailed evidence from the chief executive officer of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, about what might be a compassionate but reasonable way for the United Kingdom to approach its moral and legal obligations.
Let me focus on why I support the amendments that relate to the lack of a safe situation in Rwanda. Many of those I met in Rwanda were very keen to emphasise that their written constitution contains good human rights protections, which it does, but few of them were able to point to any case law showing people in Rwanda taking advantage of those protections, as we are—at least for the time being—able to in this country. I also found out
when I was in Rwanda that in 2016, the Rwandan Government withdrew the right of individual petition to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights because they were unhappy with the way in which it handled claims brought by Rwandan dissidents. I could not help but see an echo in that of the UK Government’s attitude towards the European Court of Human Rights when it makes decisions that they do not like.
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As I said in an intervention, the Home Office has compiled a 137-page country information note on human rights in Rwanda, collating information from sources ranging from the US State Department to Human Rights Watch, and setting out serious shortcomings in the protection of human rights in Rwanda. I asked the Minister about that, and he seemed very reluctant to engage with that point. I hope that he will come back to it. How does he reconcile his, and his colleagues’, repeated insistence that Rwanda is a safe country with the 137-page document issued by his own Government and updated in January this year? It sets out how it collates the evidence, and says that it tries to take things only from reliable sources. One of the biggest sources in the document is the US State Department—the State Department of one of our major allies.