My Lords, I am happy to follow the noble Baroness. I am grateful for the committee’s work, especially since the Commons is not debating the treaty. These Benches agree with the conclusions of the unanimous cross-party report and will support the Motions. I am also grateful to the Minister for his comprehensive reply and fulsome response to a letter that I wrote to the Foreign Secretary in December.
Some outside the House may say that, over the coming weeks, we will be approaching our work in a constitutionally unusual way. The Government are insistent that we are constituted in the way that we are with the powers that we possess, but that we should not use them—in some form of appeal to the law to make us good at scrutiny, but not yet. We will do our job and we will scrutinise properly, and on the treaty too.
The treaty builds on the MoU, in certain areas with clarity, I accept, but in most other areas with assertion and optimism. Together with the Bill, the Government respond to the Supreme Court ruling not by addressing its substantive points but by setting them aside and presenting Parliament with alternative facts.
These Benches oppose the treaty and the Bill, which place the United Kingdom at material risk of breaching our international law commitments and undermining the rule of law by ousting the jurisdiction of the courts. They will lead to further substantial costs to the taxpayer, fail to provide safe and legal routes for refugees, and fail to include measures to tackle people-smuggling gangs.
The House will recall that, on 13 April 2022, at the start of all this, the Home Office Permanent Secretary said that there was insufficient evidence to back up the Government’s assertion that the agreement with Rwanda would provide value for money, so he sought and received a ministerial direction. Some £120 million had been spent. It is utterly unacceptable that, after repeated questions on funding from me and others in this Chamber, in 2022 and 2023, only in December last year was it disclosed that a further £120 million was committed at that time—secretly by Ministers, with no disclosure.
When I visited the reception centre in Kigali in the summer of 2022, I was told that this was an annualised rolling contract, renewable in March each year. So can the Minister confirm that there will be another £120 million committed for next year, over and above the £50 million the Home Office has indicated for the coming year—and will this also be kept secret? Is this being scored against official development assistance? Why is it not being reported on a project basis in a transparent way?
Incredibly, the Home Office now says that part of the £290 million is a credit line to the Rwanda Government—not for the purpose of the treaty, but a credit line. For what, precisely, and to whom? Who are the beneficiaries?
I can inform the House today that, on top of the £290 million, the Government quietly issued a tender last March for a £78 million contract for:
“Collection, transportation, and escorting individuals overseas through an MEDP”.
Given that the only partnership the UK is seeking to agree is with Rwanda, this is now £368 million willing to be committed. Can the Minister be clear what the projection costs are for 2025 and 2026, so that we have transparency.
These Benches want an immigration system that is efficient and fair, allows for regulated movement of people for our economy and takes into consideration need and capacity. We want a system that is not gamed, either from those within the UK or by organised crime abroad, but is one where we reject the pernicious and deliberate conflation of economic migration and those seeking asylum from political and personal persecution. That conflation meant that the previous Home Secretary and the Minister in this House repeated the untruth that
“there are 100 million people who could qualify for our protection, and they are coming here”.
Well, there are not, and they are not—and the Lords Minister stopped repeating this trope only after I cited the condemnation of the UK Statistics Authority, which formally asked Ministers not to repeat it.
The Home Office is a serial offender. Last week, the head of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to my colleague Alistair Carmichael MP about the Prime Minister’s wholly misleading statement on 2 January in which he said he had got rid of the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023. It was misleading because the Home Office ignored 5,000 so-called “hard cases”, as it defines them. In a withering reply, Sir Robert Chote said that it was
“not surprising that the Government’s claim has been greeted with scepticism and that some people may feel misled”.
Furthermore, it should be noted the Home Office went full Kafka last week in sending us supporting evidence for its Bill. That evidence included this treaty, which it negotiated itself. And the justification for the necessity of this treaty, the Government say, is their own Bill.
Part of the pack is an updated country note for Rwanda, which updates one published just last spring. The one with barely dry ink was slightly inconvenient as it said a little too much about Rwanda’s human rights record and problems in processing asylum. Now, the language on human rights has been eased, massaged and sanitised. I emailed the independent inspectorate tasked with reviewing the country note and was told it had not yet concluded a review of the previous one to verify it. The Government, so eager to change the conclusions, did not even wait for the evidence from their own independent inspection body. All these aspects get to the central part of the issue and are why we must verify the treaty’s assertions before they are brought into force.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was clear. In paragraph 104, it says:
“The matters which we have discussed are evidence of a culture within Rwanda of, at best, inadequate understanding of Rwanda’s obligations under the Refugee Convention”.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, the UNHCR position on Rwanda’s insufficient processes, the UK MoU and now the treaty and Bill are also clear—and it is responsible for interpreting the convention. But the Government have sought to undermine the UNHCR; on 24 May last year, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Murray, who is in his place, told the House:
“The UNHCR is clearly a UN body; it is not charged with the interpretation of the refugee convention”.—[Official Report, 24/5/23; col. 968.]
Paragraph 65 of the Supreme Court ruling says:
“The first relevant factor is the status and role of UNHCR. It is entrusted by the United Nations General Assembly with supervision of the interpretation and application of the Refugee Convention”.
There can be no stronger rebuttal of the Government than that.
The Supreme Court also stated:
“It is also apparent from the evidence that significant changes need to be made to Rwanda’s asylum procedures, as they operate in practice, before there can be confidence that it will deal with asylum seekers sent to it by the United Kingdom in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement. The necessary changes may not be straightforward, as they require an appreciation that the current approach is inadequate, a change of attitudes, and effective training and monitoring”.
I asked the Government, with regard to their treaty commitment on refoulement, when the proposed mechanisms would be ready. The Minister replied to me, and in his response said:
“This mechanism is in development and will be in place once the partnership is operational”.
“In development”, and a process that may be extended with unlimited extensions. Does
“will be in place once … operational”
mean that they will need to be in place before it becomes operational, or that they will be put in place after the treaty is operational? It is unclear, and the Minister needs to be clear.
Equally opaque is the appeals process, which is fundamental to the court’s ruling. This is covered in Annexe B in the treaty. Given that these need to be in place in advance of the agreement coming into force, when will they be operational? I asked for a planned date. The reply with regard to the judges appointed was:
“The precise number of judges (and precise mix of nationalities) is being considered by the UK and Rwandan Governments … The process for selecting the co-presidents is being developed by the UK and Rwandan Governments and we will set this out in due course”.
We see “in due course” again, and “is being considered”, and “is being developed”. I asked the Government about the training of the judges, which the treaty says will have to be in place, and when that would be complete. Again, it is “being discussed”.
Article 14 also commits to Rwandan security service officers, which they term “liaison officers”, being part of the UK asylum process,
“including the screening of asylum seekers”.
This is quite extraordinary, given that the UK has provided asylum to six Rwandans after the Government had stated that Rwanda itself was a safe country. And there is no treaty restriction on the limits of the access to the operational processes of the Rwandan security services in screening UK asylum applications. Given that I was monitored and spied on after meeting an opposition leader in Kigali, I say to the Minister with great seriousness that this section needs very careful consideration.
Finally, Article 19 covers the resettling of asylum seekers currently in Rwanda to the UK, which the noble Baroness referenced. The Minister replied to me, saying that the UK was now committed to receiving those asylum seekers from Rwanda who are the most vulnerable. If Rwanda cannot accommodate vulnerable asylum seekers in Rwanda, why are the Government proposing to send vulnerable asylum seekers to Rwanda? I also asked how many there were. The Government said:
“As the partnership is not yet operational, we have no figure or specific information to provide to you as to the number of non-Rwandan refugees who may be resettled in the UK or their circumstances. We expect this number to be very small”.
The Minister’s response to me sought to be reassuring. He said:
“This is not a 1:1 agreement”.
I think most people will be reassured by that—but if it is not one for one, what is the figure and when will we know? Is it capped?
The Government cannot legislate new facts that are more politically palatable; they cannot mislead by deliberately misstating data; they cannot release new reports that sanitise ones that themselves have just been released; they cannot expect us to ratify a treaty when its essential elements remain unclear, with no details of timeframe or even of its commencement. They cannot do these things and expect us to turn away or to say, as some might, “Something must be done; this is something, so we must do this”—or, as the Foreign Secretary told me last week, on the lack of any of the promised new safe and legal routes, we just have to do it because we have to think out of the box. The Supreme Court was pretty clear in paragraph 104 of the ruling that when it comes to safety, thinking in the legal box is a practical necessity. The treaty does not in itself create a new reality, and therefore there are too many outstanding questions for us to assent to its ratification now.
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