Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Kevin Foster Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is somewhat comical to get a lecture on unity and financial probity from the Scottish National party, to say the least—[Interruption.] Well, if we really want something comical.

I particularly welcome this Bill because it was me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and the current Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), who were the original architects of the Rwanda plan.

A lot of that is because we in this country face challenges that other countries in Europe face—namely that, even if we turn down someone’s asylum claim, there are countries that we would struggle to return them to. There are countries around the world with Governments that we would not wish to deal with, for example, or countries that refuse point-blank, as a matter of policy, to accept enforced immigration returns. In fact, we even struggle to deport criminals back to some countries not necessarily because of concerns about those countries, but because of the domestic policies that they adopt. As was touched on by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), we cannot just drop people off; we need to get permission to do so.

Similarly, if we cannot get a returns agreement with the safe and democratic third country that someone has just left, we need to look for alternatives. That is where looking to Rwanda came in. Rwanda is a specialist in refugee resettlement. Someone listening to comments from the Opposition would never know that there are 130,000 refugees in Rwanda and that the UNHCR relocates people there. That shows that Rwanda is a specialist in that area, and it is one of the reasons we worked with it.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling was based not on the idea that Rwanda was inherently unsafe, or that if someone went to Rwanda they would actually be in danger there, but on the potential for refoulement elsewhere. I expect that many of the people who cite the Supreme Court judgment did not bother to listen to it. It is important to consider what the Bill is based on and what has changed since the judgment to allow Parliament to take a different view from that of the Supreme Court justices. Not only is Parliament entitled to do that, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) rightly pointed out, but we do so on the basis that there is now a treaty that directly addresses those points.

The Bill ratifies that treaty and makes it part of international law. It guarantees against a person being transferred on further when they have been transferred from this country to Rwanda, in order to meet their protection needs. That is the absolute core of what has changed since the Supreme Court judgment. It is why Parliament is now entitled to take the opinion—based on assurances that will be upgraded into international law by our treaty, and on the clear assurances against refoulement to a third country where someone may face persecution—that Rwanda is safe for the people transferred there.

That is why the Bill needs to pass its Second Reading. There are clearly points of detail that we can explore in Committee. The Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery and the Minister for Illegal Migration, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), for whom I have huge respect, will know my thoughts. Where will the evidence threshold be for the clause 4 provisions? Given my right hon. and learned Friend’s former role as Solicitor General and his direct experience before the courts, it would be particularly interesting to hear where he believes the courts may draw the line for interim relief. One reason interim relief is always important is that, in many cases, although a lot of the challenges thrown up at the last minute usually fail in the end, they are used to frustrate the flights. When I used to deal with the Jamaica flights, for example, we could only have so many a year, so people knew that if they could get themselves off that flight, it would be some time before there was another, if even their claim ultimately failed.

There is a wider debate to have about the refugee system. There is a debate to have about how the current law and international practice work. We have had examples of people who have lived lawfully in the European Union for a number of years with a visa, and then come to the UK and claim a protection need. Well, if they had been living in a safe and democratic European country, what was their real protection need to leave that country, particularly if they had the lawful right to be there? Those are not debates that we can settle today. What we have before us is a Bill that allows us to take forward part of our plan to tackle the issue of illegal migration. That is why we need to ensure that it passes Second Reading.