My Lords, I am grateful for noble Lords’ contributions. I have no doubt that they are inspired by appropriate feelings of concern for people caught up in, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol mentioned to us a moment ago, the disgraceful practice of modern slavery.
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None the less, these amendments are not necessary. In particular, in relation to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, they undermine the fundamental purpose of the Bill, which is to invite Parliament to agree with its assessment that the Supreme Court’s concerns have been properly addressed and to enact the measures in this Bill accordingly. Each of the measures in the Bill as originally drafted is necessary
to enable us to create a deterrent that will stop the boats. That deterrent will work only when there is an end to the cycle of spurious legal challenges that seek to do nothing more than frustrate removal and prevent us having control of who can stay in the United Kingdom.
Opening for the Opposition Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, deplored a series of steps in the Bill which he said undermined domestic and international law. The measures to which the noble Lord referred are entirely consistent with the status of a sovereign Parliament. The Bill reflects that Parliament is sovereign and can change domestic law as it sees fit, including, if that be its judgment, requiring a state of affairs or facts to be recognised. The principle that Parliament should be able to address any determination by the courts of incompatibility, rather than having primary legislation being quashed by the court, is part of the fundamental basis of parliamentary sovereignty. The example the noble Lord put forward—a citation by a head of state or a Prime Minister in a different country—is, of course, an example of precisely that refoulement which is forbidden in terms of the treaty.
The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, speaking to her Motion, said that the handling of the point of your Lordships’ amendment in the other place showed the other place to be guilty of a serious lack of respect to your Lordships’ House. What we could say instead is that it demonstrates that the other place identified that the noble Baroness’s amendment, however well intentioned, cuts straight to the heart of the policy that the Government have set out.
I think that addresses the points made respectively by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord German, to whom I would say that, as we set forth in earlier stages of this Bill, there are examples across the world of where a similar approach has been successful and has now gained approval across most of the political spectrum.
My noble friend Lord Hailsham said that the Supreme Court held that Rwanda was not a safe country; that is not the case. That is not what the judgment said. In any event, the Supreme Court’s assessment was based on a situation long since superseded, as your Lordships will hear in more detail from my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom later.