My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 76A, in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. This is a probing amendment to allow the Minister to expand on some of his helpful comments in an earlier group with regard to how the monitoring committee and the joint committee will operate.
When we started the Bill and I first read the treaty, I was not at that stage quite appreciative of how significant the monitoring committee and the joint committee would be when it comes to making decisions about the preparedness of when Rwanda would be a safe country. I was not aware at that stage, when I read the treaty, because at that stage, I was not aware that I was a decision-maker as to whether or not Rwanda would be safe. According to the Advocate-General, however, I am a decision-maker because I am a Member of Parliament and it is now a decision of the court of Parliament: this creature that has now come up from the grave to sit in judgment of a third country’s record on safety.
It is also relevant because the monitoring committee and the joint committee will be the supervising bodies, to some extent, with regard to the overall operation of the start to the end of the relocation processes. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is absolutely right: we do need more information about it, because we are gradually learning about what some of the estimates may be for the numbers to be relocated.
The Hope hostel in Kigali can accommodate 200 people, with an average processing time of a fortnight. On the previous day of Committee, we did the maths, as the Americans say. Well, we can do some more maths now, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has helped us. If we believe the Daily Telegraph, which occasionally is a reliable journal of Conservative thinking in this country, if there are 30,000 people, on the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Murray’s, impact assessment of the Illegal Migration Act, which, of course, we will take as read, that is £5.6 billion plus the £400 million down payment, so a neat £6 billion.
The Minister, in an earlier group, outlined the very high cost of accommodating existing asylum seekers in hotel accommodation. We know, through the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, that the Home Office decided on the most expensive and least efficient means by which to accommodate asylum seekers. Nevertheless, that is £2.9 billion a year—so, on any reckoning, the number of those who will be relocated to Rwanda will take at least a decade at a cost of at least £6 billion. There is no means by which the Government can have a more effective way for the British taxpayer than efficient accommodation and processing here in this country. There is no way the Government can square any of it to make the Rwanda scheme cheaper for the British taxpayer.
Ultimately, we are looking not just for value for money but for whether we can make the decision that Rwanda is safe and the mechanisms are in place.