Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Bill exhibits several characteristics of this Government. Exhibit A is their contempt for the courts, the rule of law and the constitution. They are smarting at the judgment of the Supreme Court, which found conclusive factual evidence that Rwanda was not a safe place to send asylum seekers. The court found “serious and systematic defects” in Rwanda’s procedures for processing asylum claims. The Rwandan authorities practice refoulement and have breached an agreement with another country, Israel, on that issue.

Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, has ruled by dint of rigged elections and contempt for civil rights. He despatches his agents to murder political opponents. He targets journalists who report killings, disappearances and torture. Even as the Government have been insisting that Rwanda is safe, Home Office officials have been giving asylum to Rwandan dissidents, accepting that they have a well-founded risk of persecution. The Government’s policy is morally and practically chaotic. It is a monstrous fantasy to assert that, by hastily negotiating a treaty with the regime and by legislating to declare that it is safe, Rwanda thereby becomes safe.

The Bill is unconstitutional. It usurps the function of our domestic courts. It ousts their jurisdiction in regard to its main provisions. It requires tribunals and courts to treat Rwanda as a safe country, whatever the reality may be and notwithstanding any existing provision of statute, common law or international law. By giving Ministers the power to refuse to comply with the interim rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and preventing a UK court having regard for them, the Government show particular contempt for a court that we were once proud to have been instrumental in establishing.

The Government are also suborning the Civil Service. By obliging civil servants to act on a basis they know to be false, the Bill would legitimise and institutionalise dishonesty in Whitehall and its agencies.

Exhibit B is therefore the Government’s denial of reality. The persecuted of the world will not be deterred from seeking asylum in Britain by this policy—they will not understand the law. The traffickers will not break their own business model by informing their clients that there is no point in them travelling to Britain. The traffickers, who get paid before they launch the small boats, will have no incentive to desist. The former Immigration Minister, Mr Robert Jenrick, who is the biggest enthusiast for deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda and deeply informed, says the Bill will not work. Clause 4, which provides limited scope for individual cases to be heard in our courts, intended to provide a veneer of conformity with international law, creates a major loophole.

Exhibit C is the cruelty of the policy the Bill seeks to implement. Desperate people, fleeing from persecution and danger to their lives, instead of being greeted with compassion, respect and help, are to be deported out of hand. To despatch people who may well be suffering the physical after-effects of torture, and whose mental health is highly likely to have been damaged by their experience as asylum seekers, to a country with an underdeveloped health system is horrible.

Exhibit D is political misjudgment. This would-be populist appeal to the worst in human nature is to misread the British people. The great majority of the British people do not want to see their Government acting cruelly; they want to see fair play, competent administration and the rule of law upheld.

Exhibit E is obsession. What the Government would have us believe is a great crisis—an invasion by foreigners in small boats—is a confected crisis, blown out of all proportion. In the peak year of 2022, 46,000 people crossed the channel in small boats, whereas 1.2 million migrated legally into the UK. According to the Migration Observatory, 86% of asylum seekers arriving in small boats whose cases were determined between 2018 and 2023 were granted refugee status or permission to stay. By closing off safe and legal routes, while disingenuously pretending their purpose is to save lives, the Government have forced these people into acting illegally and then scapegoated them.

Instead of cynically buying ourselves out of our obligation, the Government should deal humanely and competently with these arrivals. Instead of the literal displacement activity that the Bill exhibits, the Prime Minister should focus on the real ills and challenges of the country.

Asylum Seekers: Accommodation in Hotels

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they expect to discontinue the practice of accommodating asylum seekers in hotels.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Murray of Blidworth) (Con)]

The Home Office is working to reduce the Government’s dependency on hotels for contingency accommodation through a package of long-term and short-term measures. The full dispersal model increases the number of suitable properties that can be procured for destitute asylum seekers across the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Immigration Minister admitted in January that some 200 child asylum seekers were missing. Will the noble Lord admit that the abduction by criminal gangs of these children placed in hotels represents a disastrous failure of responsibility by the Home Office? Does he also acknowledge that the Home Secretary’s inflammatory language effectively licensed the far-right racists and bullies who besieged the Suites Hotel in Knowsley and are planning other brutalities? More than two months ago, the Prime Minister said that enough is enough and promised to end the use of hotels as quickly as possible. What steps, on what timetable, will the Government take to fulfil that promise?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I will deal first with the question about UASCs. As I updated the House in an earlier answer, of course unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are not detained or in any way restrained from leaving hotels. If they choose to leave, they can do so. There is no evidence to suggest that 200 people have been kidnapped, as the noble Lord appears to suggest. Of course it is a matter of great concern when unaccompanied asylum-seeking children go missing, and there are protocols in place, as I have already informed the House, in relation to involving the police in their relocation. On the second point he raised, there is certainly nothing to be achieved by the use of language which exacerbates the issue, but the problem around the accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels is caused by the large numbers of people crossing the channel. Finally, on the question of what steps are being taken, as I have already said, the Home Office is implementing the full dispersal model in an attempt to house those in hotels in private rented accommodation and, as announced in April last year, the intention is to do that fairly across the local authorities across the United Kingdom.

Asylum Seekers: Accommodation

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the provision of appropriate accommodation for asylum seekers after their departure from the Manston immigration centre.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Murray of Blidworth) (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his Question. We are committed to working closely with communities and stakeholders to ensure that destitute asylum seekers are housed in safe, secure and suitable accommodation. All appropriate options are being explored to ensure that suitable accommodation is secured as quickly as is necessary, and hotels are one element.

It may assist the noble Lord to know how the system works in terms of the steps of allocating accommodation. Clearly, the Secretary of State is under a statutory obligation to provide accommodation support to destitute asylum seekers. At Manston this appears to be the large majority of those arriving in small boats. They are housed at Manston for as short a period as possible, then sent to ring-fenced hotel accommodation and on to other hotel accommodation. Once their application—

[Noble Lords]

Too long!

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

I am not sure whether the Minister has finished his reply. Does he understand that when the Home Secretary uses language about an “invasion” and the Immigration Minister writes that “‘Hotel Britain’ must end”, these are incendiary utterances that might have been calculated to inflame hard-right hatred of refugees? Is he aware that, following the exposure of the squalid and dangerous overcrowding at Manston, the Home Office has abandoned asylum seekers to sleep rough on pavements in London, with no warm clothes or money? Is it not the case that the Home Office has been dumping asylum seekers, with no forewarning and no information, on councils already struggling to house people in need, or on homelessness charities, or leaving them in limbo in hotels for apparently interminable periods? How do these realities square with his claim to noble Lords that the mission of the Home Office is

“to treat all who come to our country with care and compassion”?—[Official Report, 9/11/22; col. 643.]

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

As I said in my earlier Answer, we are required to provide support and accommodation to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute while their claims are pending. Given the current pressing need to move people from Manston, we are necessarily considering all possible options and acting to secure suitable accommodation at pace. We endeavour to notify as early as possible the local authorities where the accommodation is located. The noble Lord will appreciate that this is an unprecedented situation that has required very quick action by Home Office officials.