My Lords, I follow the noble Lord with much respect for his contributions to your Lordships’ House. The proposition made by my noble and learned friend Lord Hope, which I support strongly, is that these amendments seek to give effect to
“the proposition that Parliament cannot judge Rwanda to be a safe country until the Rwanda Treaty has been, and continues to be, fully implemented”.
What do the Government say? The Government say that Rwanda is a safe country because the Rwanda treaty has been achieved and, shortly, will be fully implemented. What are they afraid of in these amendments, for they simply seek to provide insurance for the proposition made by the Government about Rwanda?
To answer that question, I invite the Minister to remind himself once again of the report dated 17 January this year from the International Agreements Committee, which was discussed at some length in previous debates in your Lordships’ House. I draw his attention particularly to paragraph 45, which sets out nine
“further legal and practical steps”—
that is the term of art used—which are “required under the treaty” and which will make, in the opinion of that committee, Rwanda a safe country that operates the treaty in the way which is intended by its words.
Can the Minister, who has been challenged to this effect before, tell us quite specifically how many of those nine requirements in that paragraph have now been implemented, which they are and, in relation to the ones that have not yet been implemented, when will they be implemented? If the Government’s optimism is such that, as the noble Lord, Lord Murray, said in an earlier intervention, it is enough to go into the Rwandan Parliament and see that the treaty has been ratified—not the requirements in the committee’s report—for that to be a way of regarding the Bill as justified, what is the intellectual basis for that conclusion? I see none: unless these requirements can be demonstrably implemented in full, Rwanda is not a safe country. The insurance policy proposed by my noble and learned friend is exactly what is needed, unless we are told of full implementation.