Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for his point. I imagine that the monitoring committee was put there at the request of His Majesty’s Government because something needed to be done to keep an eye on what was going on in Rwanda. It is made up of people who are independently appointed, with no allegiance to either Government, so one can trust them as looking at the matter dispassionately, and therefore their advice can be trusted. That is why I have introduced the monitoring committee into my amendments as the best way of finding out whether the treaty is being properly implemented.

If I followed the noble Lord’s intervention correctly, I agree with what he is saying. However, on the other hand, I accept the point made by Sir Jeremy Wright that, in the end, Parliament has to have the final say based on the advice which it receives. There has to be some mechanism so Parliament can comment on it before the fact that Rwanda is safe is reversed. How that is to be done I simply do not know, which is why I am anxious that the Government should be able to have another look at it and decide how best to proceed. However, I thought it right that Parliament should have an opportunity to comment before the conclusion is reached that Rwanda is no longer safe. I hope that answers the noble Lord’s question.

The Minister in the other place said that my amendments should be resisted because they risk

“disturbing the independence and impartiality of the monitoring committee”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/24; col. 663.]

I simply do not understand that, because the members are all independent and nothing in my amendments would in any way undermine their independence. I am very glad that the Minister here, when he was introducing this debate, did not put that point forward as a reason for resisting my amendments.

As for the Commons reasons set out in the Marshalled List, which I think the Minister here endorsed, they say that

“it is not appropriate … to legislate for Rwanda adhering to its obligations under the Treaty”,

as those obligations

“will be subject to the monitoring provisions set out in the Treaty”.

However, that fails to address the problem that is created by the use of “is”, especially should something go wrong and it is apparent to the monitoring committee that Rwanda is no longer safe. I think the Minister was suggesting that in some way it was wrong that the Government should enter into discussions with the monitoring committee, and that in a way that would undermine its independence. However, I am not asking for that. I am simply asking for it to receive advice—that is all. The advice is given; I am not suggesting that it needs to be discussed or indeed that there should be any sort of conversation, simply that it would be given.

I have probably said enough to make my points clear, and for the reasons I have given, I beg to move.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will update the House on a further development in relation to the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. We had the privilege in the Constitution Committee this morning to have the Lord Chancellor give evidence to us. We spoke of the Rwanda Bill and raised specifically with him the question that the effect of the Bill is to say that Rwanda “is” a safe country, and that the Bill once passed means that for ever and ever it will be treated as a safe country. His response, unprompted, was that one of the great protections was the monitoring committee. He said that if the monitoring committee said that the provisions of the treaty were not being adhered to and that was made public—he envisaged that it would be made public —the consequence would be that it could lead to some sort of parliamentary debate or occasion. What he had in mind was not the automatic non-application of the Bill, as with the amendment of the noble and learned Lord. However, there is not much difference between what the noble and learned Lord proposes—namely, that if the monitoring committee says it is not being adhered to, it stops applying—and what the Lord Chancellor said: namely, that there would be the opportunity for a parliamentary occasion. Therefore, I strongly support what the noble and learned Lord said. An unanswerable part of his argument is that this must be sent back to the Commons so that it can express a view and we can hear more from the Lord Chancellor in relation to this.

On a completely separate point, I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, before the Question was put. He said that the Rwandan Government— I am not sure quite how it works—were going to put a Bill somehow to the Rwandan Parliament to implement the terms of the treaty. That is separate from the point that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, made. Could the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, give an assurance to the House that the treaty will not be ratified and, therefore, that the Bill will not come into force until the Rwandan Bill has gone through its Parliament and been given effect to?