My Lords, I shall be extremely brief. Some important points have been made, but I want to focus on the exact drafting of Amendment 3, which is clearly central and what the vote will be about. The puzzling aspect is that new subsection (1B) makes the condition that
“the Secretary of State has considered all relevant evidence … and is satisfied that the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country for the processing of asylum and humanitarian protection claims”.
Fine, no problem, but then it goes on to say:
“before successful claimants are returned to the United Kingdom by request of the Secretary of State under Article 11(1) of the Rwanda Treaty”.
I have looked at Article 11(1), and it does not say that. It says:
“The United Kingdom may make a request for the return of a Relocated Individual”.
Paragraph 12(c) of the Explanatory Notes describes that as a response
“to the Supreme Court judgment by … Creating a mechanism for the UK to require the return of a Relocated Individual”.
Which is it? Does this provide for the Secretary of State to bring people back or, as the noble Baroness implied, is that the outcome that is the purpose of the whole thing? I think that is the case, but the language needs to be cleaned up, or perhaps the noble Baroness would confirm it so that we know what we are voting for.