My Lords, I very much resent that last piece from the Minister. I presented this on the basis that it was the view not of the Labour Party but of the committee as a whole. I have tried to be completely unpolitical in what I have said, and it is a great shame that the Minister should choose to make that particular observation towards the end of his speech.
I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, with so many powerful and insightful thoughts from your Lordships. There is not time to comment on them all, but I will touch on two questions. One is the powers of this House and the second is the question before us.
As to the powers of this House, there was some suggestion—I am afraid to say that to some extent it seemed to come out in the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Sandhurst and Lord Wolfson, both of whom know that I very much admire and respect them—that there is something improper in asking this House to do what I am asking it to do today. It is clear that we do not have the power to delay or block the treaty, but we can pass a resolution, if we so agree, that it should not be ratified at the moment. That is all I have asked, and I will ask for a vote on that later but this is not the moment for that. It is not right to say that that is improper; the statute itself provides in Section 20 that we can pass that resolution, so it is not satisfactory at all for anyone to suggest that doing that is inappropriate. The House has one power, and that is all we are asking it to do.
I come back to the question, because it is important; I dealt with it in my opening remarks. One finds out the question that we were dealing with by looking at the foreword by the Home Secretary to the policy paper that he put forward. I repeat: “This work”—the work is the treaty and associated things—
“will enable Parliament to conclude that the Supreme Court’s judgment has been addressed and that Rwanda is safe for relocations under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership”.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, who knows I very much respect him and appreciate the work he has done on the committee, that that is what safety means: safety from relocations under that partnership. That is what it means, that is what we were looking at and that is where we were unable to reach a conclusion.
The noble Lord, Lord Fox, and my noble friend Lord Coaker were right: the question is not whether there is a willingness to do this or whether the policy is right but whether the instruments are in place at the moment to achieve that result. I will make one slight amendment to that: the procedures to make this
possible—the 10 points in paragraph 45—are not things that we thought up but are what the Government say are going to happen. All we are saying is that those things ought to be in place before the final statement is made by Parliament that the policy is safe. Once it is done, and once the Government ratify, that is the end. That is why it is important, in my submission, to follow what the committee decided unanimously—that the treaty should not be ratified until those things are in place.
Let me give one example. Emphasis was rightly placed on the principle of non-refoulement—the Minister referred to that. But he will recall, and the House will recall, that one of the ways in which that is supposed to be protected—it is set out in the treaty—is that an agreement will be reached between Rwanda and this country as to what the procedures are to effect it. It is not in place. As I said in my opening speech, we do not know when it will be in place, although we asked about it.
So I will now ask for the Question on the first Motion to be put and then we will come to the vote on the second Motion.