I rise to support the amendments from the other place that the Government are seeking to overturn this evening. The mass migration of people—refugees, or those fleeing from the consequences of climate change, seeking a better life for themselves or fleeing from war and persecution—is a huge and serious global problem, and this Bill is a deeply unserious response to it. The Bill has become a byword for Conservative incompetence, waste of public money and, at times, deep and unpleasant cruelty.
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The Minister did not take any interventions, as is his entire right, basically because he suggested that he had heard all this before. The hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said more explicitly that this debate is all about repetition. Too right it is all about repetition: if the Government keep coming back here with ridiculous legislation, we will keep opposing it. The Lords are well within their rights. I passionately believe in the democratisation of the House of Lords; nevertheless, this legislation was not in the Government’s manifesto at the last general election, and the House of Lords has every right to seek to amend and to scrutinise it.
The amendments are hardly deeply radical and shocking. Lords amendment 1B asks that the Government and this legislation have
“due regard for domestic and international law.”
Is that colossally revolutionary? No, it is not. The fact that the Government have a problem with having due regard for international or domestic law is deeply problematic to me, as it should be to most people who would consider themselves to be Conservative.
There are a variety of amendments on safety—amendments 3B, 3C and 6B allude to that and are all important, and I support them all. As has been said by others, it is a nonsense for this Government or any Government to seek to try to make something so just by saying that it is. We have heard many colourful examples of other things we could just will to be the case: I declare Blackburn Rovers back in the premier league, and Chris Sutton and Alan Shearer both back in their 20s. That is not how the world works. If the Government now believe that they have evidence to suggest that Rwanda is a safe place, fair enough; they should present the evidence to the court. That is how a normal constitutional Conservative or democrat of any other kind should behave.
Lords amendment 9 talks about protecting victims and potential victims of modern slavery. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), is rightly proud of the modern slavery legislation, and this Government should retain some pride in that. The amendment would not prevent the Rwanda programme from taking place; it would just prevent those people who are potentially at risk of modern slavery from being part of that deportation. There is no reasonable justification for any reasonable Government to object to amendments 9 and 10B.
Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I have spoken to people who escaped Afghanistan—people who helped the police and UK armed forces against the Taliban, but were left behind. The only way they could seek safety was via irregular routes and, eventually, by crossing the channel and ending up in the United Kingdom. Amendment 10B would allow the individual I am thinking of, who I met in Barrow a few months ago—he has been well served by my neighbour, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell)—the right to be here and not to be removed. This is about Britain doing the right thing and maintaining its obligations to people who put their lives on the line to protect us and our forces.
I said that this as a deeply unserious Bill to deal with a massively serious problem. The least serious thing that the Minister said today was that the Bill constitutes
any form of deterrence. The simple fact is that if the Government get their own way and everything goes absolutely perfectly, one in every 200 asylum seekers here might just get sent to Rwanda. What nonsense! If someone fled the murderous tyrant Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea because they would be conscripted to murder their own people, and crossed the hellhole that is Libya, went across the Mediterranean—for pity’s sake—and the rest of Europe, they would then be faced with crossing a relatively small body of water to get to the United Kingdom and a 0.5% chance of being sent to Rwanda. The idea that that deters anyone—who is the Minister trying to kid? This is a ridiculous waste of money. The money spent on Rwanda so far could have done many things, including employing more than 6,000 caseworkers to help remove those people who are not genuine asylum seekers. That would actually be a deterrent. Instead, we have this nonsense.