Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The problem for the right hon. Member is that he has a scheme that is likely now to cost £400 million and that is only likely to cover less than 1%, and perhaps less than 0.1%, of the people arriving in this country. That is why the permanent secretary has said that there is no evidence of a deterrent. We need the practical measures to take action to go after the criminal gangs and to work with our neighbours. He says that the Government are doing that already, so how come there has been a drop of 30% in the number of people convicted for people smuggling? If they are really going after the criminal gangs when we know that people smuggling across the channel has rocketed, how come convictions for people smuggling have plummeted by 30%? That is the evidence that the Government are failing to do the basics to tackle those practical things.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The right hon. Lady is making a powerful case that seeking to legislate by assertion that Rwanda is safe is as dangerous as it is ridiculous. Does she agree that those who claim that this is about parliamentary sovereignty, and that that is why this sinister attack is justified, are wrong, because Parliament can be meaningfully sovereign only within a functioning legal and constitutional system, which this Bill totally undermines? Without the courts being able to interpret law, the legal system does not work, and it undermines this place, too.

[Yvette Cooper]

We have constitutional roles for Parliament and the courts. It is right for Parliament to respond to court judgments, to adapt and to change policy, but this Bill instead puts at risk the compliance with international law that we need to be able to make further agreements.

I do not think that, in the end, all of this is about Rwanda; it is about the deep divides in the Conservative party. It is about their chaos. It is about the Prime Minister’s inability to show leadership. It is about the fact that they just want to tear lumps out of each other. They are creating chaos while letting the country down.

The former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark, has said that the Government are now aiming for just

“one or two symbolic flights off before the next election with a handful of illegal migrants on them”.

That is not the same as stopping the boats, strengthening border security or fixing the asylum chaos.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

This year is the 75th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights. What an irony, and what a shameful indictment of Ministers, that our Government are marking it by putting in front of Parliament a Bill to wave aside our human rights obligations and the judgment of the highest domestic court in the land.

This insulting and dangerous legislation attacks both human rights and our democratic structures. In doing so, it both demeans and disrespects the role that the UK has played in helping to shape the international rules-based order, including its contribution to the drafting and early ratification of the European convention on human rights in the aftermath of the horrors of world war two. It is stated on this shameful Bill’s very cover that the Government cannot say that it complies with the UK’s obligations under the ECHR—a terrible admission of this Government’s willingness to violate the principle that human rights are universal and belong to all of us by virtue of our humanity.

As others have noted, the Bill overturns an authoritative, unanimous Supreme Court judgment based on extensive evidence and made just three weeks ago. Our highest domestic court ruled that by sending refugees to Rwanda, the UK could breach its obligations under the ECHR and other international laws such as the refugee convention, the UN convention against torture and the UN international covenant on civil and political rights, as well as domestic law.

In seeking to oust the jurisdiction of our domestic courts by forbidding them from making assessments of fact and disapplying the Human Rights Act, the Bill is constitutionally exceptional and provocative. It explicitly disapplies multiple sections of that landmark Act, including basic minimum standards that protect us all, leaving barely any room for judicial scrutiny. Courts would be barred from considering whether removing an individual to Rwanda could result in removal to a country where they would face torture or inhuman and degrading treatment. What kind of Government would want the courts to ignore that and undermine the separation of powers that is fundamental to UK democracy?

This ugly Bill also attacks interim measures: a vital human rights tool under international law issued on an exceptional basis in extreme circumstances where individuals face a real risk of serious and irreversible harm. It both enables UK Ministers to decide unilaterally whether the UK should comply with interim measures and prohibits UK courts from having regard to them when considering any case relating to a removal decision to Rwanda.

To try to justify this cynical and sinister attack on the highest court in the UK, the Prime Minister has started to say that “Parliament is sovereign.” Obviously, Parliament can pass whatever laws it wants, but we have courts so that everyone, including this Government, acts with respect for the laws that Parliament has passed.

As others have said, this Bill simply will not work. Its so-called deterrent is not a deterrent to someone fleeing torture or persecution, who has already put their life at risk by taking to one of the busiest shipping lanes in dangerous, inflatable boats. The Bill has nothing to do with that, in any case; it is a performative piece of cruelty by a dying Administration and a grotesque waste of money that is neither practical nor strategic.

Most important of all, the outsourcing of our human rights obligations to a third country is downright immoral. To immorality we can add absurdity. Seeking to legislate by assertion that Rwanda is safe is as ridiculous as it is dangerous. The Government cannot sign a quick treaty one week and legislate the next to make a country safe, when the highest court in the land has said just the opposite. The facts on the ground are what matter. It feels bizarre to have to say it, but apparently necessary: legislation to say that Parliament believes something to be true does not make it so. Fixing the facts on which the law is to be applied is the kind of thinking that dangerous conspiracies are based on.

As Tom Hickman KC said in a paper for Institute for Government:

“If the Government considers that the treaty has eliminated the real risk of refoulement then it should seek to persuade the courts of that, not parliament.”

It should not need saying that when the UK Government sign a treaty, they should stick to it. They now have the embarrassment of being schooled by the Rwandan Government, who, despite their poor human rights record, are sending out warning shots that even they will pull out of this shoddy deal if the UK Government breach international law to implement it.

I will vote against Second Reading tonight, because there is no tweak or amendment that can improve something that is rotten to its core. The Bill is a doomed and draconian attempt to reassert the Prime Minister’s fragile claim to a non-existent authority, but it has serious consequences and sets an extremely dangerous precedent. These are deeply dangerous times in this country, and they are made more dangerous by this Government. We have already seen the suppression of the right to strike and to protest, and other democratic principles and standards seriously eroded. Now we have this flagrant attack on human rights, on our courts and on the separation of powers in this country. I call upon this Government to abandon their cruel, immoral and unworkable Rwanda plan, and to re-establish the UK’s good standing as a member of the ECHR and international community.