My Lords, I was interested to listen to the Minister’s remarks, and I thank him for the introduction, but let me say why we think that the amendment that I have put forward to your Lordships now is still so necessary.
The Minister just asserts that domestic law will be obeyed, along with international conventions and laws. The last time this was before your Lordships’ House, we debated at great length some of these domestic and international law issues. They were dismissed in a sentence by the Minister in the other place—not by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart—with an assertion that we comply with domestic and international law. Nowhere did the Minister in the other place address the fact—I go back to a point that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has made, at great length—that the Bill explicitly lays out that international law can be disapplied. It states that, when an Act, it
“is unaffected by international law”,
and then lays out all of the various treaties that can be ignored by the Government in the pursuit of their Rwanda policy—a policy that disintegrates before their eyes. Hundreds came across in small boats at the weekend, and thousands since the beginning of the year. Where is the Government’s announcement about that? When the figures go down, the Government announce it all the time; when the figures go up, there is radio silence from 10 Downing Street about whether or not the policy is working.
I say again to the Minister, in order to be reasonably brief, that it simply is not good enough for a Government to assert that domestic and international law will be applied when this Bill is passed. That is why we pushed this. We want something that persuades us that the Government take this seriously. All this amendment seeks is that there be due regard; it does not say any more than that. It is softened significantly to that extent. There is a necessity for the Government to have due regard to international law, and I have laid out some examples of the various legislative Acts that have been passed by this Parliament, of which we are all proud.
I come to international obligations. We have just had the Foreign Secretary explain at great length the importance of convention and international law, and of abiding by the things that we have signed up to.
That is why we take action with respect to the Middle East. That is why take action with respect to what we quite rightly call the illegal war in Ukraine. That is why we take action with respect to the Houthis in the Red Sea. We take action with respect to all of that because our country proudly stands up for international convention and international law. It respects those conventions; it expects other countries to respect those conventions.
That is the whole point of what I am putting before your Lordships’ House. What on earth does it do to the credibility of His Majesty’s Government when, in international conventions across the globe, they stand up and lecture other countries on the importance of adhering to international law and convention and then pass a law that explicitly states that, with respect to the Rwanda Bill, they do not have to? Where is the integrity of the Government? I want His Majesty’s Government to be able to stand up in all the citadels of the great and good, where countries of the world meet together to solve common problems. The last time I spoke, I said to the Minister that the Prime Minister of Pakistan had used the Rwanda Bill as a legitimate reason that he could send people back to Afghanistan. He used the British Government as an example of the fact that he could ignore international conventions.
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What has it come to when we read about another problem that we cannot go into? The Government cannot get anybody to fly these refugees and migrants—they cannot persuade anybody. Even the RAF is refusing, though I guess if it were ordered to, it would have to. We read that AirTanker is the latest airline. We cannot find an airline to fly the migrants back—the thousands who are waiting, queueing up at the airports. I found one airline that decided, at great length, that it was not going to ruin its brand by flying migrants back to Rwanda; it decided that that was something it could not bring itself to do. What has it come to when we read that the Rwanda state airline has rejected the UK proposal to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda because it is worried about the impact it will have on its reputation? Why on earth are the British Government not taking a cue from the Rwanda state airline, in saying that this will risk the global brand that Britain proudly has across the world? The Government should take a cue from the Rwanda state airline and say that they want to conform to international law and make sure that they will not be undermined in the courts of the world. There we have it, as an example to us all.
The amendment before us is simple. It simply asks the Government to have due regard to domestic and international law—the Acts that this Parliament has passed, the international conventions we have signed, and the law of nations which prevent anarchy in our own country and across the world. How on earth has it come to this for the great Conservative Party—the party that has always said that it treasures the rule of law and will always stand up for it, and that has for generations lectured the party to which I belong on the importance of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, both internally and internationally? It is unbelievable that the Minister has just dismissed this
with a swish of the hand, as did his colleagues in the other place. Something as important as this has been just dismissed: “We’re going to do it. Don’t worry about it. There’s no need for us to explain how on earth it’s possible”. Something as important as this has just been swept away. This Motion should be agreed as one more effort to say to our Government, “Be true to the traditions on which the democracy of this country has been based for centuries, something of which we have all been proud”.