My Lords, I refer to the register of interests for support from RAMP.
We are indebted to the International Agreements Committee for its carefully argued report which, as we have heard, makes a clear recommendation to your Lordships’ House. Having read much of the evidence to the committee and other expert commentaries, including from the Law Society, I am satisfied that this recommendation is well based. The consensus among them is that, despite improvements in the treaty compared with the original memorandum of understanding, the treaty cannot of itself guarantee that the concerns raised by the Supreme Court will be met and that they are unlikely to be so in the short to medium term, as the committee concludes. The kind of improvements sought by the Supreme Court to make it safe will take time. To quote from the updated analysis provided by the UNHCR, referred to by my noble and learned friend:
“Even with the injection of additional resources, and sustained capacity development efforts, the transfer of an unspecified number of asylum-seekers from the UK to Rwanda will inevitably place additional pressure on a nascent and already overstretched system for receiving and adjudicating individual asylum claims”.
This is a system that, according to the Government’s own supporting evidence, has considered only 421 cases in the past five years, rejecting three-quarters of them despite many of the asylum seekers coming from countries such as Afghanistan and Syria that have high acceptance rates in the UK, as we have heard. The UNHCR states:
“As of January 2024, UNHCR has not observed changes in the practice of asylum adjudication that would overcome the concerns”
set out in its original analysis and evidence to the Supreme Court. It therefore continues to have concerns that asylum seekers transferred to Rwanda
“would not have access to fair and efficient procedures for the determination of refugee status”.
Based on its own extensive experience of capacity building, which emphasises system thinking, it warns of the limitations of training without the
“necessary legal framework and implementation capacity”.
Drawing on the evidence it received, the committee underlines the weaknesses of the commitments on training and monitoring, welcome as they might be. It reminds us of the Supreme Court’s point that, however good the monitoring proves to be, it does not help those it identifies as having been turned down wrongly. To quote the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants,
“it would be far too late for the individuals whose lives would already be irreparably and irreversibly harmed”.
At the heart of the UNHCR’s concerns is the belief that, despite all the treaty’s claims, it, like the Bill,
“is not compatible with international refugee law”.
The JCHR observes that:
“The Supreme Court decision relied on evidence that Rwanda had previously failed to comply with international human rights treaties. It is hard to see how turning an agreement into a treaty can answer serious underlying concerns about Rwanda’s compliance with its international treaty obligations”.
Those concerns are hardly assuaged by the recent revelation, already referred to, that six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum in the UK since the original agreement was signed in April 2022. According to the i newspaper, at least one of these decisions was based on sexual orientation. Given Rwanda’s worrying record on LGBTQI+ people, outlined in the Public Law Project’s evidence to the committee, there is very real concern, among groups such as Rainbow Migration and the British Red Cross VOICES Network, about the implications of the treaty and the Bill for LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum in the UK who could be sent to Rwanda.
The treaty is full of assurances about both countries’ commitment to their international obligations with regard to refugees. Survivors of the Illegal Migration Act’s proceedings might recall that our concerns—based on the UNHCR’s unequivocal analysis that that and the earlier Nationality and Borders Bill did not comply with the refugee convention—were dismissed as simply one interpretation of that convention’s requirements. So, in true humpty-dumpty fashion, there is nothing to stop the Government asserting that these obligations are met under this treaty and the accompanying Bill when the experts say they are not, because, for the Government, words mean what they say they mean.
Apparently, according to the Foreign Secretary, as we heard, this represents
“out-of-the-box thinking”.—[Official Report, 16/1/24; col. 316.]
But legitimate asylum seekers, whom the Government wrongly call and treat as illegals, would be safer if thinking remained within the box of the official UN statement of these obligations. The committee is thus right to charge us with the need to consider carefully whether the treaty fundamentally changes the Supreme Court’s assessment regarding Rwanda’s international obligations. I believe all the evidence suggests that it does not.
One of the issues of substantive concern to the committee was the treatment of children. Needless to say, I have not seen any child rights impact assessment—can the Minister tell us whether there will be one before we consider the Bill itself? The committee’s report notes:
“The Treaty envisages that unaccompanied children might be removed to Rwanda if their age is in dispute. If subsequently determined to be children they would be returned to the UK. This might result in children being placed in unsafe situations”.
The potential unsafe situation raised in the ILPA/Justice evidence concerns sleeping arrangements. Can the Minister assure us that no age-disputed child would be required to share a sleeping area with adults?
The report cites witnesses’ arguments that the treatment of age-disputed children would be contrary to our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to prioritise the best interests of children and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s recommendation to the UK to
“ensure that children and age-disputed children are not removed to a third country”.
Instead, there is a very real possibility that they will be removed to Rwanda and, if subsequently found to be under 18, sent back to the UK in a cruel human pass the parcel, which is likely to be very distressing for children who almost certainly have gone through considerable trauma.
Last year, a Written Answer to me gave the assurance that, under the MEDP, established by the original memorandum of understanding,
“No one undergoing an age assessment, or legally challenging the outcome of an assessment, will be relocated until that process is fully concluded”.
Can the Minister please explain why the treaty indicates otherwise? Given the chief inspector’s description of the age-assessment process for those arriving by small boats as “perfunctory”, and given plenty of other evidence, there is a very real danger of a significant number of unaccompanied children being earmarked for removal to Rwanda, despite the treaty’s assurances.
As your Lordships know, there are very real concerns about the introduction of so-called scientific methods in the age assessment of children. I realise that even if age assessment is completed in the UK, unless there is a legal challenge, the assurance I was given last year would not ensure that no child was erroneously relocated—but it would at least provide some protection. Nor would it cover children in families for whom, according to Barnardo’s,
“Forced removal has devastating impacts on mental and physical health and will blight the development and futures of these children”.
Finally, I will say a word about deterrence, which is presented as the treaty’s overarching objective in Article 2. In response to a recent Written Question asking what evidence there is of a deterrence effect, the Minister replied:
“We set out the evidence covering this in the published impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Act”.
Veterans of the passage of that Act may remember that the impact assessment said that:
“The academic consensus is that there is little to no evidence suggesting changes in a destination country’s policies have an impact on deterring people from … travelling without valid permission, whether in search of refuge or for other reasons”.
Refugee Council research supports that conclusion. Moreover, it suggests that, rather than being deterred from travelling, asylum seekers will take even more dangerous journeys to reach the UK and, once here, will be more likely to go underground, as have nearly 6,000 asylum seekers already according to the Home Office. The expert organisations the Refugee Council contacted believe that this will increase rather than remove the power of traffickers and others out to exploit desperate asylum seekers. Journalists from the Times and the i who spoke to asylum seekers in Calais were told that they would not be deterred by the threat of removal to Rwanda.
The Refugee Council research also found a consensus among organisations that the scheme and the state of perpetual limbo it would create for so many would have a very detrimental impact on the mental health of those seeking asylum. This is also emphasised in briefings from the BMA, Médecins Sans Frontières and Doctors of the World. They cite existing evidence of the detrimental effect on mental health of the prospect of removal to Rwanda, where they fear the healthcare will be inadequate because of a critical shortage of skilled health workers. We are talking here about extremely vulnerable people who have already often suffered trauma and even torture.
The latest report of the independent monitoring board expressed concern about the “deep anxiety”, “distress” and
“the increase in self-harm observed during the period when men were being detained for removal to Rwanda”.
On this point, can the Minister explain why, according to the i newspaper, the first 47 asylum seekers selected for relocation to Rwanda more than 18 months ago are still being kept in limbo given that the rules state that applications deemed inadmissible should be considered if relocation is unlikely within a reasonable period of time?
In his oral evidence to the committee, the Home Secretary conceded that
“None of us has an interest in rushing the fence and getting it wrong”,
and that
“If the elements of the treaty are not in place, obviously we will not be able to rely on the treaty for the purposes of asylum process”.
While he expressed confidence that the elements of the treaty will be in place, his confidence is not shared by a wide range of experts nor by the International Agreements Committee. I therefore believe it would be irresponsible of us to call for the ratification of the treaty now, and I hope that your Lordships will support the second cross-party Motion in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith.
5.13 pm