My Lords, I speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord German. It has been a short debate, in comparison to that on the first group, presumably because some have now given their Second Reading speeches on this Bill and that is sufficient for them. We will just have to go through the grind. It has, nevertheless, been an interesting debate.
I will pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howard. Of course, members of the Supreme Court are not here to answer questions, but I understand that they considered whether the Divisional Court was correct in deciding whether Ministers had followed an incorrect process, under law. The Supreme Court’s view was that the question to answer was whether issues of fact on refoulement, which was the origin of the appeal, were to be determined. That is why the Supreme Court made the decision that it did, and that is the relevant part of judicial review. I do not think that the relevant part of judicial review for the Bill is the Supreme Court’s judgment, but that judicial reviews of the process that decision-makers had followed in deciding to relocate anybody to Rwanda can no longer be carried out. That will now be prohibited which, if I
may say so, is a major constitutional step, which the Bingham Centre and many others have warned against. I suspect we will hear that in other groups of amendments and, for me, that is the important part of judicial review.
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The noble Lord, Lord Murray—who is not in his place to listen to the Minister’s closing speech, even though he spoke on this group—referenced the Supreme Court in an intervention on my noble friend, in regard to when the Supreme Court made its decision and whether that decision could be taken as only a snapshot view of its position on Rwanda then. That seems to be what Ministers have said: the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, the Advocate-General, said that at Second Reading and the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, referred to it in the debate on the first group. It seems to be a fundamental part of the Ministers’ case that we can look at the Supreme Court judgment only in the context of the evidence and information that it took up to the point of its judgment.
However, paragraph 104 of the Supreme Court judgment said categorically and clearly that:
“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”.
Paragraph 102 of the Supreme Court’s judgment referred to
“the scale of the changes in procedure, understanding and culture which are required”.
So changes will be necessary in scale, as well as to attitudes, effective training and the current approach. However, we know from the UNHCR—to which the Supreme Court gave considerable weight—and its report from this January that those factors are still not in place. That is a major reason why this House declined to state that Rwanda is currently a safe country.
When the Minister winds up on this group, if he is to persuade us that the Supreme Court’s view should now be addressed because of the time lapse, what has happened between then and now has to be evidenced. That is what my noble friend is asking of the Minister, so I hope that he gives a clear, detailed response to Amendment 84. That lays out the 10 things that a committee of this House identified as needing to be done before we can consider whether Rwanda is a safe country.
At this point, I raise my challenge about “we”. The “we” here is Parliament, the legislature not the Executive, which will make a determination about a relocation or a safe country. We know it has long been the practice for there to be lists of countries to which someone could be relocated, either because we have a relocation or resettlement agreement with them or because the Minister has stated in secondary legislation, which subsequently has not been vetoed but has been approved by Parliament, that an individual may be sent back to those countries. Sometimes these schemes are voluntary, or they could be forced removals, but this is a long-standing practice. It is difficult and controversial, but there is consensus to that approach.
This is a world away from a system in which the Executive state that they consider a country safe, and that decision is approved by Parliament and can then
be judicially reviewed. We are a world away from that when it comes to one country uniquely—Rwanda. It is the reversal of Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind—what do you do, sir?” It seems that, when Ministers change their minds, they want to change the facts.
So what are we going to do now? I do not think we should approve it, because we would now—on the statute book and unique among our legislation—have legislated in perpetuity, in primary legislation, defining a country’s asylum procedures in accordance with our standards. If that country changed them in any way, we would have to change statute in this country to follow what it does.