My Lords, the creation of our International Agreements Committee is a rare constitutional highlight of the past five years. I congratulate it on the scrutiny that it provides in the context of a statutory framework that leaves much to be desired and on the decision that it took in May of last year to focus particularly on treaties which are novel or have significant implications for politics or public policy, human rights or expenditure. The UK-Rwanda treaty might be thought to qualify on all those grounds. We can be grateful for the committee’s thorough and perceptive report, and for the opportunity to debate it at a stage when the debate can still be useful.
I also congratulate the British and Rwandan Governments on putting their MoU into the form of a treaty, as the committee recommended, and on starting to address some of the defects identified by the Supreme Court. However, and without doubting the good faith of either Government, it appears that as the Supreme Court anticipated, those defects will not be fully addressed in the short term. The UNHCR, from its position on the ground, spoke last week of the need for
“sustained, long term efforts, the results of which may only be assessed over time”.
That chimes with my experience when reporting, some years ago, on the analogous policy of deportation with assurances. The object of the policy was to enable non-British terrorist suspects to be deported to their countries of origin, even when, without specific guarantees, those countries could not be considered safe. Guarantees were negotiated by way of treaty, MoU or exchange of letters with six countries in the Middle East and north Africa. I travelled to Jordan and Algeria in 2014 to see how they were being implemented on the ground. My conclusion was that, contrary to the views of some lawyers and UN rapporteurs, but consistent with the view of the European Court of Human Rights, such arrangements can, with the right partner, be delivered, at least in the national security context, both effectively and compatibly with international law. Indeed, the mutual legal assistance treaty with Jordan, negotiated by James Brokenshire and Theresa May, was successful in meeting the conditions laid down by the courts for securing the departure of the dangerous extremist Abu Qatada for trial in Jordan. However, to negotiate and, in particular, to implement such an arrangement,
particularly a broad-ranging one, requires what my co-author Professor Clive Walker and I described as “the most laborious care”. In the oral evidence that I was invited to give to the committee, I detailed some of the practical obstacles to independent monitoring, even in Jordan where there was a strong political will to make the arrangement work.
I also recall that when I visited Algeria in 2014, the British embassy did not know the whereabouts of any of the nine men whom we had deported there under that policy. Perhaps that is not so surprising, when even in this country it is possible to lose track of some 5,600 asylum claimants whose claims were withdrawn in the year to September 2023. But it is a concerning precedent when one is looking at the risks in Rwanda, including, of course, the risks of refoulement.
The committee has looked at the evidence before it including, heroically, the almost 600 pages of evidence published by the Government on 11 January. It is not satisfied; as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, has said, it has identified 10 further legal and practical steps that would be required to meet the concerns of the Supreme Court, which it does not anticipate will be met in the short to medium term. These include such vital elements as the new Rwandan asylum law and the implementation of arrangements for monitoring and judicial consideration. The noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Kerr, have added to the committee’s concerns in their powerful speeches.
The committee proposes that ratification should be delayed until Parliament can be properly satisfied that the protections written into the treaty have been fully implemented in practice. The committee has little to say about the treaty’s companion piece, the safety of Rwanda Bill. May I suggest two respects in which the Bill reinforces the committee’s recommendations?
First, the Bill is due to enter into force on the same day as the Rwanda treaty, which will itself enter into force immediately on ratification by both parties. Planes could, in other words, be in the air the day after ratification. That does rather demonstrate the practical dangers of ratifying prematurely.
Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has said, the existence and terms of the Bill confirm the general view that the treaty has not yet rendered Rwanda safe. If the treaty were watertight, it could be defended with confidence in the courts, as was the MLAT with Jordan. Yet the Bill goes to considerable lengths to avoid such scrutiny, challenging as it does so the rule of law, the separation of powers between the courts and Parliament, our domestic human rights settlement, our compliance with international law and the Civil Service Code. If the Government were prepared to wait until things are as they need to be on the ground, and if that wait were as short as they claim it would be, none of this damage to our constitutional fabric would be necessary.
In the end, perhaps, it is as simple as this. The Bill seeks to give the status of law to what it calls
“the judgement of Parliament that … Rwanda is”—
not will be or could in the longer term become—“a safe country”. Our own specialist, cross-party committee, the only one in Parliament, has unanimously given us the clearest possible advice that we are in no position to make such a judgment so, for my part, I do not see
how in good conscience we could make it. For that reason, I support both Motions in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and I shall vote for the second one if, as I hope he will, he chooses to test the opinion of the House.
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