My Lords, I beg to move Motion A1 as an amendment to Motion A. I do so in the unavoidable absence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who tabled the previous versions of Amendment 3 and has been good enough to approve this one.
We are in the endgame now. We will, this week, have a law that provides for the offshore processing and settlement of asylum seekers in Rwanda. Its benefits remain to be seen. Its costs will be measured not only in money but in principles debased—disregard for our international commitments, avoiding statutory protections for the vulnerable, and the removal of judicial scrutiny over the core issue of the safety of Rwanda. That is now a fact, and there is nothing more we can do about it.
But there is a further principle, as precious as any of those, to which we can still hold fast. One might call it the principle of honesty in lawmaking. I presume on your Lordships’ patience this evening because we have it in our power to reinstate that principle without damaging the purpose of this Bill or delaying its passage any further. We are concerned with the safety of Rwanda, both in the present and in the future. This Bill is honest about neither.
The present position is governed by Clause 1(2) of the Bill, which
“gives effect to the judgement of Parliament that the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country”,
yet there has been no statement even by the Government that Rwanda is currently a safe country, as defined in Clause 1(5). The Minister said just now—I noted his words; they are the same words he used last Wednesday—that
“we will ratify the treaty in the UK only once we agree with Rwanda that all necessary implementation is in place for both countries to comply with the obligations under the treaty
”.—[Official Report, 17/4/24; col. 1033.]
This has not yet happened. Against the background of what the Supreme Court described on the evidence before it as
“the past and continuing practice of refoulement”,
those obligations include, by Article 10(3) of the treaty, the agreement of an “effective system” to ensure that refoulement no longer occurs. The Minister has repeatedly declined the invitations of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to confirm that this system—a precondition for the safety of Rwanda—is fully set up and ready to go. Neither have we heard anything from the monitoring committee. While the Minister’s confidence is comforting up to a point, we are simply not in a position to make the judgment this Bill imputes to us.
The Bill’s treatment of the future is still further from reality. Parliament is asked to declare that Rwanda will always be a safe country, even if the progress made since the genocide of the 1990s—and one can only commend Rwanda on that—should ever falter or go into reverse. Decision-makers, immigration officials, courts and even the Secretary of State are bound by Clause 2 to treat Rwanda conclusively as safe in perpetuity.
Bluntly, we are asked to be complicit in a present-day untruth and a future fantasy, by making a factual judgment not backed by evidence, then by declaring that this judgment must stand for all time, irrespective of the true facts—this in the context not of some technical deeming provision in the tax code but of a factual determination on a matter of huge controversy on which the safety of human beings will depend. This is a post-truth Bill. To adapt a phrase we have often heard from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, it takes the culture of justification, which is a trademark of this House, and replaces it with a culture of assertion. It takes hopes and rebadges them as facts. It uses the sovereign status of this Parliament as a shield from scrutiny, and it makes a mockery of this Bill.
My amendment addresses first the present and then the future. The first part, proposed new subsection (7), requires the Secretary of State to tell us when, in his judgment, Rwanda is safe. It is this statement, not the judgment we are supposed to be reaching tonight, that will determine when the flights may lawfully begin. He has the detailed evidence on this. Despite our best efforts, we have had only scraps.
In previous versions of the amendment, this ministerial statement on the safety of Rwanda has been conditional on a favourable opinion from the Government’s own monitoring committee, established under the treaty, which we are told is already operational and which is ideally placed to assess the evidence. It has been objected,
on previous occasions, that the monitoring committee should have no more than an advisory role. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and I have listened and have revised this amendment, which now provides only for the monitoring committee to be consulted. The statement on safety would be purely for the Secretary of State.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asked the Minister last Tuesday to confirm that
“before the Government are satisfied that Rwanda is a safe country, they will seek the views of the monitoring committee
”.—[Official Report, 16/4/24; col. 900.]
No such assurance was forthcoming. I cannot say why not; perhaps we will get an assurance this evening. Failing that, this amendment would write one into law.
The second part of my amendment, proposed new subsection (8), deals with the future. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, pointed out the problem in these terms:
“no provision is made anywhere in the Bill for what should happen if the facts change and everyone can see that Rwanda is no longer safe
”.—[Official Report, 16/4/24; col. 902.]
Sir Jeremy Wright, Sir Bob Neill, and Sir Robert Buckland—none of them lefty lawyers, the last time I checked—have made the same point in the Commons debates. The Minister indicated last week that if the Government thought Rwanda had become unsafe, there might be some unspecified “parliamentary occasion” to mark that development, but of course no such occasion, other than the passage of a full Act of Parliament, could do the trick. I think that was effectively acknowledged by the Minister in the Commons this afternoon.
This assumption of perpetual parliamentary infallibility is an embarrassment and a nonsense. Fortunately, there is an alternative, which presents not the slightest threat to what the Government are seeking to achieve. Proposed new subsection 8 would give the Secretary of State an untrammelled power to decide in the future that Rwanda is no longer a safe country. Such a decision would release all decision-makers, including himself, from a legal fiction that makes the law look like an ass and those who make it asses.
So there is a speedy and effective way to reinstate the principle of honesty in lawmaking. To quote the parting words of Sir Robert Buckland, who rebelled this afternoon, alongside Sir Jeremy Wright, “Sort this out now”. I persist in the hope that reason may yet break out in the Minister’s response. If it does not, I propose to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.
7.30 pm