Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Jeremy Wright

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

I work closely with my right hon. and learned Friend in a number of ways, as he knows, and I am well aware that he is a former Attorney General. If he were right that it is not for the Government or this House to determine whether measures are compliant, why on earth would they seek and get the Attorney General’s advice on just that?

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

My right hon. Friend knows that the Attorney General is consulted on a variety of different legal questions, both domestic and international. He would not expect me to disclose any of the advice I have previously given, but I can tell him that the Attorney General does give advice on whether the Government’s actions may or may not be in compliance with international law, but neither the Attorney General, nor, I think the Government, expects to be the ultimate arbiter of that question. The advice is given as to whether it is likely that that action would be in compliance with the law. I will come in a moment to what I think the Bill and the Government can properly do in relation to international law responsibilities, but it seems to me that what they cannot properly do is set themselves up as judge in their own cause on questions of international law. This House would be wrong to pass a Bill that suggested that they could. That is really where my amendments are focused.

As I say, there is a good practical reason why we should be nervous about this: because we do sometimes rely on international law to discharge our own policy intents and purposes. Not more than 48 hours ago in this place, we were doing exactly that. We were saying that it is important to criticise the actions of the Houthis in the Red sea because they contravene principles of international law. We were saying too that we justify our own response to that because it is in accordance with the principles of international law, and quite right, too. We would not have accepted the Houthis’ unilateral declaration that they were in compliance with international law when they did what they did, nor should we have, and we would not of course accept a Russian legislative Act to say that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was in compliance with Russia’s international law responsibilities.

Let me make it clear that I am not, of course, suggesting that what the Government have in mind here is in any way comparable to those two examples, but it seems that the point here is that to arrogate to oneself the right to declare one’s own compliance with international law runs the risk of, first, other states finding comfort in our example and, secondly, undermining our own messages in other situations. That makes this not just bad law, but bad foreign policy.

Online Harms

Debate between John Hayes and Jeremy Wright

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the need to take urgent action to reduce and prevent online harms; and urges the Government to bring forward the Online Harms Bill as soon as possible.

The motion stands in my name and those of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). I begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for what I hope the House will agree is an important and urgent debate. I am conscious that a great number of colleagues wish to speak and that they have limited time in which to do so, so I will be brief as I can. I know also that there are right hon. and hon. Members who wished to be here to support the motion but could not be. I mention, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, who is chairing the Committee as we speak.

I hope that today’s debate will largely be about solutions, but perhaps we should begin with the scale of the problem. The term “online harms” covers many things, from child sexual exploitation to the promotion of suicide, hate speech and intimidation, disinformation perpetrated by individuals, groups and even nation states, and many other things. Those problems have increased with the growth of the internet, and they have grown even faster over recent months as the global pandemic has led to us all spending more time online.

Let me offer just two examples. First, between January and April this year, as we were all starting to learn about the covid-19 virus, there were around 80 million interactions on Facebook with websites known to promulgate disinformation on that subject. By contrast, the websites of the World Health Organisation and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention each had around 6 million interactions. Secondly, during roughly the same period, online sex crimes recorded against children were running at more than 100 a day. The online platforms have taken some action to combat the harms I have mentioned, and I welcome that, but it is not enough, as the platforms themselves mostly recognise.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

You may have noticed, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am ostentatiously wearing purple. I have been missioned to do so because it is World Pancreatic Cancer Day. We have been asked to emphasise it, because raising awareness of that disease is important.

My right hon. and learned Friend is right to highlight the horror of degrading and corrupting pornography. Indeed, the Government have no excuse for not doing more, because the Digital Economy Act 2017 obliges them to do so. Why do we not have age verification, as was promised in that Act and in our manifesto? It is a straightforward measure that the Government could introduce to save lives in the way my right hon. and learned Friend describes.

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree with my right hon. Friend, but I will be careful, Mr Deputy Speaker, in what I say about age verification, because I am conscious that a judicial review case is in progress on that subject. However, I agree that that is something that we could and should do, and not necessarily in direct conjunction with an online harms Bill.

Digital platforms should also recognise that a safer internet is, in the end, good for business. Their business model requires us to spend more and more time online, and we will do that only if we feel safe there. The platforms should recognise that Governments must act in that space, and that people of every country with internet access quite properly expect them to. We have operated for some time on the principle that what is unacceptable offline is unacceptable online. How can it be right that actions and behaviours that cause real harm and would be controlled and restricted in every other environment, whether broadcast media, print media or out on the street, are not restricted at all online?

I accept that freedom of speech online is important, but I cannot accept that the online world is somehow sacred space where regulation has no place regardless of what goes on there. Given the centrality of social media to modern political debate, should we rely on the platforms alone to decide which comments are acceptable and which are unacceptable, especially during election campaigns? I think not, and for me the case for online regulation is clear. However, it must be the right kind of regulation—regulation that gives innovation and invention room to grow, that allows developing enterprises to offer us life-enhancing services and create good jobs, but that requires those enterprises to take proper responsibility for their products and services, and for the consequences of their use. I believe that that balance is to be found in the proposed duty of care for online platforms, as set out in the Government’s White Paper of April last year.

I declare an interest as one of the Ministers who brought forward that White Paper at the time, and I pay tribute to all those in government and beyond, including the talented civil servants at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who worked so hard to complete it. This duty of care is for all online companies that deal with user-generated content to keep those who use their platforms as safe as they reasonably can.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Jeremy Wright

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

The majority of the Bill is sensible and necessary for an effective United Kingdom single market when we are no longer subject to EU rules. My issue, as for others, is clauses 42, 43 and 45, which take what was agreed less than a year ago about the primacy of the withdrawal agreement over domestic law and reverse it. They are not a clarification but a contradiction of that agreement, and the Government are very clear about this: doing that would be breaking international law.

I agree that it is possible to break international law without automatically breaking domestic law. It is also true that Parliament is sovereign, and it can choose to break international law if it wants to, but the fact that an international law breach is not a domestic law breach and is not unconstitutional does not make it a good idea. The blatant and unilateral breach of a treaty commitment could be justified only in the most extreme and persuasive circumstances. The Government say that such circumstances are those in which no ongoing trade arrangement is made with the EU and where the Joint Committee established under the withdrawal agreement to resolve problems of interpretation is unable to do so, leaving the UK in an impossible position.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

That is the nub of the argument, is it not? These are exceptional circumstances. We are about to negotiate by far the most important agreement that this country has reached for the last 40 years. In those highly dynamic circumstances it is right that this Parliament should give the Government sufficient flexibility to get the best possible deal for Britain. That is what this is about, and that is why we should support the Bill.

[Jeremy Wright]

If my right hon. Friend will allow me, I will address exactly that point and what the Government could be doing instead of what they are proposing to do. Let me say first that the possibility of reaching no trade agreement and of deadlock in the Joint Committee was foreseeable yet when the withdrawal agreement was signed, and again when it was legislated for, the Government did not say that the risk of the outcomes they rely upon now undermined the deal on offer; they said then and they say now that this was a good deal. So what has changed?

That leads to the argument to which my right hon. Friend refers: that, unexpectedly, the European Union is now adopting an interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol so outrageous and so far from a rational reading of that protocol that we could not have seen it coming and we could not possibly accept it, leaving no option but to abrogate ourselves the relevant parts of the protocol. But the withdrawal agreement sets out a mechanism for resolving disputes about interpretation, involving binding independent arbitration and penalties including the suspension of obligations under the agreement. If the EU’s new approach is so far from what the agreement intended, why would the Government not succeed in using that mechanism?