Rob Roberts
Main Page: Rob Roberts (Independent - Delyn) Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
Rob Roberts ExcerptsTuesday 16th January 2024
(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 16 January 2024 - (16 Jan 2024)
Robert Jenrick
Let me address that question head-on. I have known my hon. Friend for a long time—he was not born yesterday. That argument is not a plausible one, in my opinion. The argument that the Rwandan Government would walk away from the scheme was raised not just at the eleventh hour, but at one minute to midnight. It is predicated on the belief that the Government of Rwanda would walk away from a scheme on the grounds that it might conceivably fall foul of the European convention on human rights, which Rwanda is not a party to, when the only reason we would fall foul of the convention would be conduct in Rwanda itself. I do not find that a plausible argument.
If that were the correct response, why then pilot a Bill through Parliament where the very front page says that the Government cannot attest to the Bill’s compliance with international law? Why would the Prime Minister say that he is willing to ignore foreign judges when his own legal advice says that that is in breach of international law? Why would we pursue a policy that the UNHCR said yesterday is, in its opinion, in breach of international law? That is not a plausible argument from the Government.
It was unwise of the Government to solicit that press release from the Government of Rwanda. I do not think that we should cast blame on the Government of Rwanda, because they are honourable people who want this scheme to work, and I have the highest opinion of our interlocutors in Rwanda. It is for that reason that I want to do what we said we would do when my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham created the scheme, which is to work with them in good faith to get the job done.
Robert Jenrick
I will not give way at the moment; let me make some more progress on explaining the amendments, if I may.
The way that flights will work when the scheme commences is not under the Illegal Migration Act 2023 at all. The first several months of flights will involve a group of individuals whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham and her officials at the time selected when the Rwanda policy was first devised. Those individuals have been in the United Kingdom for years. We have lost contact with many of them and none of them can be subject to the protections in that Act.
Even if hon. Members believe that the serious and irreversible harm test within that Act is a very strict one—I will come to that in a moment—that will not apply to the flights that will go off in the months ahead. It might not apply to any flights that go off before the next general election. If we want those flights to be full of illegal migrants and for there to be a deterrent effect, hon. Members need to support the amendments I have set out, which create that strict approach.
Robert Jenrick
I will give way in a moment. When we come to those individuals who are subject to the strictures of the Illegal Migration Act, the Government’s contention is that the serious and irreversible harm test is a very high one. I do not think that is right. The Supreme Court’s judgment lowers the bar. The revealed preference of the judiciary is to be generous towards illegal migrants and to make the scheme difficult to operationalise. As this is the last legislative opportunity for us to tackle the issue, I suggest we get it right and narrow the opportunities for the judiciary to intervene, or else we are going to find that these flights are symbolic flights, with very few individuals on them at all.
Mr Roberts
I want to touch on something the right hon. Gentleman said earlier about whether the Bill will work at all. He has often gone on the record talking about the Albania scheme, which has been very successful: there are 90% fewer Albanians coming across. In the year to September last year, 2,749 illegal migrants were returned to Albania. They did not require the amendments. The law that we currently have allowed them to be returned, and I do not remember hearing about any appeals from those people. On that basis, and given that this Bill is stricter than what we currently have, why will it not work, if the Albania scheme already works?
Mr Roberts
Good afternoon, Mr Evans, and thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate in reference to my amendments 1, 2 and 3 to the Bill and some others that I will cover during the course of my remarks. I am not a lawyer or an immigration specialist, but I have sought advice, done my research and, above all, spoken to the people of my constituency.
This is the first time that I have been sufficiently animated to speak in a debate on this issue. Contrary to what we hear regularly from hon. and right hon. Members, when I walk the streets of Delyn and speak to my constituents, almost none of them raise the issue of illegal migration as being among the things they are most concerned about. I appreciate that rural north Wales is a different place to many constituencies, but it is worth noting for the record that it is not the priority of everyone in the country. They would rather the Government spent more time improving public services, making our streets safer, returning us to a period of greater economic stability and—dare I say it—aiming for prosperity, but here we are in another effort to solve the intractable problem of small boat crossings with this Bill.
Some elements do not necessarily sit well with me, but some of the amendments, sadly, sit even worse. Some of the rhetoric that we hear on this subject is quite alarming. I have tried in my small number of amendments to apply a little common sense and compromise, neither of which appear to be in abundant supply when it comes to discussing this issue.
I listened carefully to the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who is sadly no longer in his place, who spoke passionately on this issue and answered my question and others put to him in interventions very well, but I cannot help but retain a feeling of the fundamental unfairness of some of his amendments. I will expand on that later.
Turning to my amendments, amendment 1 seeks to compel the Home Secretary to confirm on an ongoing basis that Rwanda remains a safe country. I have no interest in restarting the debate about whether it is safe now; for the purposes of this legislation, we assume that it is. What I am trying to address in the amendment is the political and social instability that exists in many parts of Africa, and that regime change is more common in that part of the world than any other.
It will be 30 years this year since the horrific Rwandan genocide in 1994, and a lot of things have happened in those years, largely down to stability and the steps taken by President Kagame. It is probably worth noting that since 1994, Rwanda has had two Presidents, whereas the UK has had eight Prime Ministers of varying levels of honesty and competence. It might therefore seem unusual to table an amendment on regime change, but it is a real concern none the less.
In 2021, coups d’état ousted four Heads of State in sub-Saharan Africa. Elected leaders in other African nations were accused of enacting a more authoritarian approach, presumably to stave off a similar rise of forces against them. Between 2017 and 2019, President Bouteflika of Algeria, President al-Bashir of Sudan and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe were ousted after a combined 90 years in power. In a paper released two years ago almost to the day, experts from the London School of Economics and Political Science showed that,
“their removal, rather than a direct consequence of mass protests and economic downturns, was the culmination of ripened factionalism, which had blossomed after the leaders’ attempts to centralise power.”
That simply illustrates the potential volatility of politics in the region and the rationale behind my amendment. It is not an onerous requirement that the Home Secretary must lay before the House a report every 12 months confirming that Rwanda remains safe. As a responsible partner to various international agreements and conventions, it would seem the least we should do in that regard.
I will take amendments 2 and 3 together, as they are related, as well as commenting on other amendments on the same issue. As a layperson who is not legally trained in any way, but hopefully has a decent dose of common sense, I find it unthinkable that individuals against whom any kind of judgment is made would not be allowed the right to appeal against that judgment. That type of thinking puts our legal process back 100 years; it is frankly beneath us and beneath what this Parliament should stand for.
We have in this country a robust and well-established legal system, from magistrates to county court, Crown court, High Court, Court of Appeal and finally the Supreme Court, with various tribunals and other such devices for specific purposes. As a matter of law and simple fairness, we allow people to question and appeal. Shoplifters can appeal. Car thieves can appeal. Abusers can appeal. Perpetrators of domestic violence can appeal. Rapists can appeal. Murderers can appeal.
I have listened carefully to the arguments of some of my colleagues, both personally and what has been said in the House and in various media outlets. I feel compelled to conclude that the trend towards dog-whistle politics and putting the label of enemy on people where no such label needs to apply seems to have got the better of some people. I point out to colleagues that although it is often the noisiest voices that call for migrants simply to be rounded up and shipped out, the noisiest voices are almost certainly not the voices of the majority of the people of the United Kingdom, which is and always has been a welcoming and kind country to those in need.
We can point to all manner of schemes to show that that has been the case. Even recently, between 2015 and June of last year, more than 179,000 people arrived in the UK from Ukraine. Over that same period, more than 123,000 people have come to the UK on the basis of being granted British national overseas status and more than 50,000 people have come as part of the Afghan and Syrian resettlement programmes. We are a kind and supportive country to those in need—but have we become what many consider to be a soft touch? Perhaps in some ways we have.
I look at the movement of people in two distinct ways: they are either moving away from something or moving towards something. What I mean by that is that some people are, as we all know, in a horrific situation. Whatever people think of the Government in the UK, it does not carry out large-scale attacks against its own people, as we have seen in Syria, and the Government of the UK does not routinely persecute and incarcerate people who dare to speak out against them. Of course we recognise that people in many places across the world need to flee. They need to move away from that situation.
Where I end up, however, and where I have sympathy with some of the arguments made by those on the right among Conservative Members, is that there is a clear and distinct dividing line between someone moving away from danger by necessity and someone moving towards something else by choice. That is where much of the message is lost and drowned out by noisy activists on both sides, when a calm and common-sense approach to thinking about the problem would make it very clear. Those people I mentioned earlier, in danger and in fear of persecution, incarceration or worse, must of course do all they can to remove themselves from that situation and to save their lives and those of their families. I have absolutely no problem with that.
Where the problem lies, however, is that once there is no danger and the fear of persecution, incarceration or worse has passed, movement is out of choice rather than necessity. People are then moving towards something they consider preferable, rather than away from danger—the danger is over. I completely understand the arguments and the confusion about why people need to move from France, a perfectly safe country. Aside from the occasional street protest, and baggage handlers battering luggage when they actually turn up for work, France is a civilised, modern and, above all, safe country where people are not in danger, so people who come from there are no longer seeking to escape but are in fact moving towards something preferable. That is where the arguments of certain charities and some Opposition Members sadly lose their credibility.
The problem is that, once they have made that journey across the channel, they are our responsibility, and we simply cannot send them back unless France agrees to take them, which it will not—why would it? Aside from the fact that the French have no desire to increase their own problem, we have just spent the last decade calling them and their friends everything under the sun and saying that we do not want anything more to do with them, so of course they are not inclined to help us deal with this problem.
What do we do when we cannot just send people back and have to deal with the situation ourselves? We have heard many Opposition Members say that we cannot do this or that, but no one has said, “Here is what we would do instead.” Many people have said throughout the debate that there is no capacity in the UK—that we do not have enough houses for everyone, or enough doctors, dentists, hospitals schools or general infrastructure for even our existing population—and they are right. Relocating asylum seekers to a safe third country is a long-established mechanism used all over the world—it is nothing new—but I do not like the push for a lack of due process in order to remove people’s rights in favour of speed, expediency and a populist movement.
Amendments 2 and 3 would balance those competing needs by allowing for appeals if they are heard remotely from Rwanda post-deportation, which seems perfectly feasible. If covid taught us anything helpful, it was that we could be a lot more flexible in our use of technology than we had been. Since 2020, courts have been rapidly moving online: the cloud video platform was introduced in response to the pandemic, and a video hearing system is already being used nationally in tax and property tribunals, as well as in Chester Crown court, not far from my constituency. By all accounts, it works seamlessly and is a great success. His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service plans to transition to a new service of video hearings covering more areas, so it seems perfectly reasonable for the same technology to be used to hear appeals against asylum decisions.
As the Government have considerably narrowed the eligibility of appeals in clauses 2 and 3, the chance of any eligible claim rearing its head is negligible, so there is no reason that individuals cannot continue to be removed before having their appeal heard via a Government-established video conferencing facility in Rwanda. I am aware of the established principle laid down in law, in the European convention on human rights, that people cannot be removed to Rwanda if there is an imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm. The Government rightly need to pay heed to that situation, as the UK is very much a signatory to the ECHR—a situation that should not even be considered for change.
As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), mentioned, it would not be appropriate simply to ignore that rule. I thank the Minister for the time he took to address that concern in relation to my amendment and to explain why he did not feel that my proposals would be possible. I completely accept his explanation and am pleased to have had it confirmed by the right hon. Lady earlier, but I hope that a simple common-sense approach will be taken in the aftermath. For example, colleagues have expressed concern that women who are heavily pregnant might be able to appeal on the basis of being unfit to fly. I hope that the process will recognise that anyone determining themselves fit enough to take a 30-mile journey across a dangerous sea in a barely floating craft that could capsize at any moment cannot then claim to be unfit to take a flight in perfectly comfortable and safe conditions.
Mr Roberts
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I am curious, and it is possibly my procedural unawareness that leads me to ask this question, but if this Bill is voted down tomorrow evening on Third Reading, is it not the case that we will not be able to bring anything else back within this Parliament, on the basis that we cannot ask the same question twice if it has already been negatived? He said that it is not an ideal Bill, it is flawed and its success is 50:50 at best, but if he votes it down, there is surely a zero per cent. chance of anything happening.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I remind Members that when intervening they should please look forward, so that their voice, mellifluous as it may be, can be picked up and the Hansard reporters can get the words down accurately.
Sir Simon Clarke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is possible to bring back a Bill on this issue, providing there is a substantial difference in what is brought forward from what we are debating. I would argue that a Bill that was not focused, as this one is, on the general safety of Rwanda, but on the wider enforceability of our immigration law could be brought forward in this Session.
It was a regrettable farce—I use the word advisedly—in the previous Parliament of which I was a Member that the overt bias of the then Speaker, Mr Bercow, meant that we were frustrated when we attempted to deal with this issue in the context of Brexit. If the Government do not support amendments to the Bill—I hope they will—I do not anticipate that situation arising in what would be the happy event of their coming forward with a new Bill that goes further on these points so that they can command the support of the whole of the Conservative party.
Sir Simon Clarke
I will not give way further on this point. We are clearly keen as a Conservative party to deliver on this problem in a way that will satisfy the British public.
The Prime Minister has said that he will do “whatever it takes”. Unfortunately, I do not believe that, as of this moment, we are set to do whatever it takes to stop the problem. I can vote for this legislation only if I believe genuinely and sincerely that it will resolve the problem and I can look my constituents—the people who send me here—in the eye and say, “This is going to fix it”, because I have done so twice before and let them down. I urge my colleagues to reflect carefully on that.
The Prime Minister has confirmed that the general election is likely to be held in the latter half of this year. I am afraid that, by that time, there will have been contact between this Bill and the reality of our court system, and I do not think the outcome will be a pretty one. There will have been time for it to be tested and, I fear, for it to fail. At best, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark observed, we are likely to see a few token flights setting off—not the automatic deterrent that will be required to change the incentives. The expectation for a young male who is in essence an economic migrant in all but name seeking a better life in the UK needs to be that he will be detained and removed. That, and that alone, is what will change the incentives driving this trade. That is not what is set to be delivered by the Bill.
In the absence of amendments being brought forward and supported by the Government, I will not be able to support the Bill. More than that, I will vote against it on Third Reading. I say that with real sadness but with total determination that we as a Conservative party should show that we are honest with the British people about the nature of the crisis we face, and that we are determined to do everything in our power to resolve it. Short of that, this legislation cannot have my support.
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend is right and I sense, understand and share her passion for resolving the issues in relation not only to the tribunals but to the courts. I know her background and passion for ensuring that the backlog in the court system is dealt with, and she knows my position on that as well. I encourage her to look at the detail that the Lord Chancellor set out in the written ministerial statement. It is right to say that it is in response to the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) took through the House, and it is right to say that it is there to ensure capacity in our tribunal system. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines)—there was an exchange on this in the debate—that we must ensure that that capacity is there in our court system as well.
Mr Roberts
Before the Minister moves on from the contribution of the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), I intervened in his speech to say that my opinion was that if the Bill was voted down tomorrow on Third Reading, no similar Bill could be brought back because it would be an issue the House had already dealt with. The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland was of the opinion that a substantially different Bill could be brought back. The problem is that if the House declines all the amendments, as it is entirely likely to do, presumably any future Bill that was brought back would include all those amendments. Therefore, as the House will have substantially dealt with all those issues, if the Bill is voted down tomorrow, it will not be able to come back in any form.
Michael Tomlinson
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate my determination to get the Bill through. I am the Minister for this Bill, and I am determined to get it through today, tomorrow and at its further stage.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) for her constructive speech and the constructive tone that she adopted during the debate. She is right: we are united in wanting to make the scheme work. I am very grateful to her for mentioning the Prime Minister’s words in Italy, which bear repetition. He said rightly:
“If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow…If that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, then we must do that. Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming”.
My hon. Friend was right to echo those words, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to re-emphasise them now.