My Lords, I am concerned about Amendment 9 from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, which on the face of it seems extremely reasonable. If new, clear evidence and facts emerge, they should obviously be presented and tackled appropriately, but I wonder whether we are mixing up what the law can do with operational issues. After all, as was explained at some length from the Front Bench in the last debate, we have a monitoring committee with all sorts of bells and whistles, which should be able to pick up anything that is going wrong on the ground floor; it is the ground floor that matters. It is that issue—operational versus the law—that concerns me.
I quote to the House the remarks of Sir Robert Neill, who is a lawyer and chairman of the House of Commons Justice Committee, at Second Reading in the other place:
“Equally, the idea that legislation is the sole or even the principal solution to this situation is, I think, wrong. Ultimately, an operational solution is required … Ultimately, it will be operational measures that make the real difference”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/12/23; col. 783.]
This is the point: there is a danger of mixing up operational issues, which may be dealt with by the Rwandan Government, the British Government, and
the instruments put in place by the treaty, and getting the courts involved at too early or inappropriate a stage. That is the risk with the commendable idea that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has.