My Lords, I will also speak in favour of Amendment 17, tabled by my noble friend Lady Lawlor, to which I have added my name. As I said at Second Reading, I support the Bill. I am afraid that the Rwanda policy is a bit of a Heath Robinson arrangement. It shies away from some of the tough decisions needed to solve the problems. But I support the Bill because it is the plan we have, and we must hope it makes a difference.
It can certainly be improved. Most of the amendments discussed today would make it worse rather than better, and less effective rather than more effective. Amendment 17 is one of the few exceptions to that. It aims to provide a more clearly drawn Bill—one that can withstand challenges and fulfil its purpose more effectively, by making clear that no other legal provisions of any kind, whether in domestic or international law, can be used to frustrate the policy.
I do not want to repeat issues that have already been raised in Committee and discussed again at length today, but I will briefly explain why I support this amendment and then make one comment based on my involvement in recent years in the intersection between international and domestic law.
First, it is absolutely clear that this Parliament may legislate against international law, and indeed the Government may act in contravention of international law. As we have already heard, Clause 1(4) makes that clear and nobody is seeking to amend that. It is a long-standing, fundamental element of our constitution. It is not some sort of weird, UK-specific provision; there is good reason for the dualism in our system. First, otherwise Governments could act to create domestic law merely by signing an international treaty and thereby sidestep normal democratic processes. Secondly, it reflects the reality that international treaties are in practice very difficult to adapt to changing conditions because all the parties must agree to changes. It has been suggested by some noble Lords today and in previous debates that that is what should happen and that we should seek to renegotiate the international framework. The refugee convention, for example, has 149 state parties, including such well-known supporters of international law as China, Russia and Iran. Are we going to wait for them all to agree to amend this framework? We are clearly not, but if national Governments accept that they can deal with pressing
national challenges only by renegotiating these treaties, they are in effect abandoning their duty to govern their own countries on matters of huge importance.
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If a Government choose to act against international law, they may pay a reputational price, one that is often hugely exaggerated, as we have heard in the case of France. They may consider that price justified, depending on circumstances, but they must weigh it up. That is what the Government have done in this case. I worry that they have set the balance in the wrong place, setting supposed compliance with international obligations crafted in a different era on a higher plane than the core state function, which is one of the basic raisons d’être of a Government: controlling the country’s borders.
That is where Amendment 17 is designed to help. It is designed to deliver the goods that are invoiced, as it were, in Clause 1(4). That clause recognises that there is a right for Governments to act, and, if Amendment 17 were agreed to—I suspect it will not be—it would be the necessary action. It does what is necessary to make this policy work by closing off, as far as possible, the ability to challenge it and the ability of domestic or foreign courts to act against it. It does that with a goal of delivering what people in this country want: a Government who are actually in control of our borders.
I briefly turn to my second point. This is the third time that Parliament has debated compliance with international law. I had a small hand in two of the previous occasions: the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, where the relevant clauses that would have explicitly breached international law were withdrawn, and then the Northern Ireland protocol Bill, the whole of which was withdrawn. Now we have the Rwanda policy. It is not a coincidence that this keeps coming up. The UK is enmeshed in a set of international legal obligations that, in defiance of our constitutional traditions, in practice constrain the sovereignty of this Parliament and therefore the ability of any Government to act in the interests of the good governance of this country. While we were members of the EU, the huge constraints of that made those other legal obligations less visible, although no less intrusive. Now we are not in the EU, they are there for everybody to see.
Mark my words: this issue will not go away, I am afraid. I do not think the Government have quite faced up to it with the Bill. In particular, they have not faced up to the need to free ourselves from the ECHR. The only issue is: how much more time will be wasted? How many more constitutional traditions will we lose? How much more will democracy be circumscribed before government does what is necessary in making the top priority the democratic wishes of our citizens and the good governance of this country? That is why I support Amendment 17. It at least shows the necessary direction of travel, and it signals very clearly what will, in the end, be necessary to fix this problem.