My Lords, I will speak in favour of this group, particularly Amendments 6, 14 and 20, but I wish to avoid the circularity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, was saying, that has been inevitable on something so interconnected.
The Home Secretary has said that
“we will not operationalise this scheme until we are confident that the measures underpinning the treaty have been put in place; otherwise, the treaty is not credible”.
This set of amendments enables this approach, so if the Government are not willing to accept these amendments, can the Minister explain how they will ensure that the obligations of the treaty—to quote the treaty itself—
“can both in practice be complied with and are in fact complied with”?
This is an even more pertinent question since any recommendations arising from the monitoring arrangements in the treaty are non-obligatory. To take just one example from the Government’s own evidence pack, a new asylum Bill is required in Rwanda before an assessment of the implementation of the treaty can be made. When will this legislation be published and will it be, to use the official term, fully operationalised before any flights take off?
Much wisdom has been articulated in this Chamber today. I urge the Government to listen and act accordingly.
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