May I start by agreeing with what the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), said about there being nothing new to say? The trouble is that he then spent 14 minutes saying nothing new. He said that the amendments do nothing to stop flights getting off the ground, but the fact that we are still having to debate amendments is preventing the legislation from going through, which would allow the scheme—literally—to get off the ground. Now it is time to get the Rwanda legislation done.
On the remaining amendments, many people have had days, weeks and months to make their points. The Government have given undertakings, and we have heard further undertakings about the treatment of Afghan refugees today. The Bill does not oblige the Government to return anybody from Afghanistan; there are explicit schemes to protect them.
When it comes to declaring Rwanda a safe country, the only reason why the legislation states as such is that a court declared it not to be, based on limited and snapshot evidence. The Government have a white list of countries that are deemed not to be safe—the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office issues guidance about where it is safe to travel—but what constitutes “safe” in the eyes of those courts? Is Spain safe to a Catalonian dissident who is in exile because they have taken issue with the Spanish Government? Is it safe to go back to France? Some of the refugees I have met in the Napier barracks claim that they are beaten by French police, and that it is not safe for them to go back to that country. Indeed, in the eyes of some court judgments, is London safe for a person who is “openly Jewish”?
Plenty of safeguards are given in this Bill: it will bring people back to the UK if Rwanda is deemed not to be safe or appropriate. Plenty of international legal scrutiny has now been added into the Bill. The issue of refoulement, which was the Supreme Court’s major complaint, has been dealt with, and legal assessment is available for those sent to Rwanda. I will say it again: when the Home Affairs Select Committee went to Calais last year, we were told by all those who were in charge of the policing system on the beaches that when the Government announced the Rwanda scheme the previous May, there was a surge in migrants around Calais approaching the French authorities to try to regularise their position in France, because they did not want to risk being sent to Rwanda.
It is disgraceful that, time and again, those behind these amendments—the Labour party, continuing this ping-pong—have not come up with a single solution to the really important question of what we do with asylum seekers who have come to this country illegally, who have no credible case to be in the UK, but who it is practically impossible to return to their own country. It is also absolutely disgraceful that just this morning the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), made it quite clear that a Labour Government would abolish the Rwanda scheme, whether it is working or not. They are saying to people on the other side of the channel, “Just wait a few months, and then you can come in your droves.” That is the truth of the matter, and these amendments need to be beaten again.