Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of all 10 of the Lords amendments that are before us today. They each serve to make this shambolic mess of a Bill marginally less absurd and, as I will come to in a second, they would serve only to put in statute what Ministers have promised from the Dispatch Box. Not one of the amendments is designed to prevent the departure of flights to Rwanda, as the Prime Minister has repeatedly and wrongly implied.

We all want to end the Tory small boats chaos, and I am proud that the Labour party has consistently put forward a smart, pragmatic and sensible plan to do so, starting by going after the criminal smuggler gangs at source through a new cross-border police unit and a new security partnership with Europol. However, this Bill and the treaty that accompanies it will not contribute in any way to achieving that aim.

[Dr Evans]

Since 2020, we have seen 82 gangs disrupted and more than 400 people arrested because of the actions of this Government. I am keen to understand Labour’s idea about smashing the gangs. How much more would that cost, and what would it look like as a total percentage of numbers?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We will eradicate the activity of the criminal smuggler gangs by having a proper security partnership with our European partners and allies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that his party has spent the last eight years trashing and destroying our relationships with our European partners and allies. What we would have with a Labour Government is a basis of trust to get the results that we need to see for the British people—that is what sovereignty is all about.

The entire Rwanda debacle has absorbed a vast amount of time, energy and money that should instead have been focused on taking back control of our border security from the criminal gangs who trade in human misery. Let us not forget that more than 100,000 asylum seekers have crossed in small boats since 2020, with 40,000 arriving on this Prime Minister’s watch alone. The chaos must end, and this Government are clearly unable to restore order at the border, so it is time for them to get out of the way so that Labour can get the job done.

Before I get into the substance of the amendments, I would like to pay tribute to the noble Members of the other place, who tabled them. In so doing, they were fulfilling their constitutional, democratic and patriotic duty by scrutinising and seeking to amend the Bill, just as they would with any other piece of legislation that comes before them. They have not been intimidated or sidetracked by the Prime Minister’s mistaken assertion that the Bill should have some kind of special status or treatment, which would somehow allow Ministers to railroad it through Parliament and to drive a coach and horses through Britain’s long-standing democratic conventions. Indeed, this profoundly dismissive attitude has manifested itself in the way in which the Government have point blank refused to engage with the Lords amendments. They have rejected every one of them, rather than seeking to use them and see them as a basis for negotiation and compromise.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

On amendment 1, is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords, which has a significant number of Members of the other place, has explicitly stated that it is clear and unambiguous in the words used in the statute that international law gives way to the supremacy and sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament? The Committee said that in paragraph 58 of its report, which was published only last year.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the Supreme Court—the highest court of our land —has ruled unanimously and in no uncertain terms that Rwanda is not a safe country to which to send asylum seekers. I know that he is very taken with parliamentary sovereignty, and that is very important, but parliamentary sovereignty must be based on having due regard to the findings of our judiciary. It is to be exercised with caution and moderation, which is why it is so important that our colleagues in the other place have played their role.

[Sir William Cash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I will give way one more time.

[Sir William Cash]

I am extremely grateful, because this question goes right to the heart of the matter. Paragraph 144 of the Rwanda judgment itself is unequivocal: the President of the Supreme Court ruled to dismiss one of the cases— that of ASM, an Iraqi—on very specific grounds. He said that the consequence of the sovereignty of Parliament with respect to the legislation—the immigration Acts and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023—was that the Court had to dismiss his claim. The supremacy of Parliament prevailed in that judgment for the very reason I have just given, as set out in paragraph 144 under the principle of legality.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but at the end of the day, we cannot legislate to turn dogs into cats. We cannot legislate for the sky to be green and the grass to be blue. That is a basic tenet of the respect with which our institutions should be treated, and putting this kind of absurd legislation before us is frankly turning our institutions into a laughing stock. I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman keeps that in mind.

Let us be clear: the only special or unique status that can be found in the Rwanda Bill and the treaty that accompanies it is in its extortionate implementation costs, its unlawful nature and its glaring unworkability. Indeed, as I turn to address the details of the amendments, it is important to point out that since the Bill was last debated in this place, even more evidence of the astonishing unaffordability of the scheme has come to light. This failing scheme was already costing the British taxpayer almost £400 million, even though not a single asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda, but every new detail is more astounding than the last. We recently learned that the first 300 asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda would cost the British taxpayer an extra £200 million, earning an invoice of £570 million from the Rwandan Government for just 1% of the 30,000 asylum seekers who crossed in small boats last year. That is almost £2 million per asylum seeker. Let that sink in for a moment—£2 million to send just one asylum seeker from the UK to Rwanda, and then another £182,000 per person on top of that. In comparison, processing an asylum seeker in the UK costs just £21,000.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the thousands of asylum seekers who are being dispersed up and down the country, with very little support given to local services. While the Government are obsessing over gimmicks, they are not dealing with the real problems in local communities and supporting those communities to host the people they are dispersing up and down the country. This crisis continues, and the Government need to get a grip on it.

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the smoke and mirrors that have been used about clearing the backlog—lots of administrative withdrawals and other ways of just getting people out of the backlog—are being combined with shortening the eviction period, which is leading to a staggering increase in homelessness among those who have been granted asylum. What is happening is frankly a stain on the conscience of our country. A total lack of co-ordination between the Home Office, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and our colleagues in local authorities is leaving those local authorities high and dry.

[Sammy Wilson]

Although the hon. Gentleman and I might not share many views on this Bill, does he share my surprise that the Government have refused to accept Lords amendment 8, which would require them to report on this Bill’s success? As the Government do not want the number of removals to be reported to Parliament, does he suspect that they know this Bill will not be as effective as they think?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent question. Sometimes the mask slips in the Government’s response to amendments. Perhaps they have decided, very disrespectfully, to refuse to engage on any of the Lords amendments because, exactly as he says, they worry that lifting the lid on this box might show a total failure inside.

[Mr Dhesi]

The shadow Minister is making an excellent speech. Let us not forget the history: the Tories’ Rwanda Bill is the third new law on channel crossings in just three years. The first law has been partly suspended, because it had so many problems and actually made things worse, and the second Bill has still not been fully enacted. This third Bill is another gimmick costing the public purse £2 million a person. Does my hon. Friend agree that, rather than constantly chasing gimmicks and trying to dupe the British public, the Government finally need to get a grip on the situation?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree with every word my hon. Friend says.

Just imagine if the amount of time, money, resource, energy and political capital burned on this hare-brained Rwanda scheme had been used to do things that might actually deliver, and just imagine if the Government had listened to Labour’s plan for delivering the change we need to see. We might have made some progress and seen things working. By the way, we supported what the Government have done with Albania. Why do we not see more of that, rather than this utterly ridiculous government by gimmick? What a waste of time and money.

The level of waste and this Government’s cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money are utterly staggering. Where, oh where, is the plan for the remaining 99% of cases that the Government say will be inadmissible? Tens of thousands of people who are now ineligible to be processed and ineligible to claim asylum cannot be sent to Rwanda either. That backlog, the so-called perma-backlog, currently stands at 56,000 people, with most of them living in one of more than 300 taxpayer-funded hotels across the country, costing millions of pounds every single day.

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful argument against this Government’s wasteful policy. Is he aware that the £2 million cost of sending each person to Rwanda would cover 67 new police officers or 72 new nurses in my constituency to fix the horrendous backlog created by this shambolic Government?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend has done his maths on the £2 million. I particularly enjoyed his analogy with the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which shows that the Rwanda plan is a galactically wasteful policy. He is right that so much of this is about choices and priorities, and the Government’s choices and priorities are simply wrong in wasting valuable taxpayers’ money that would be much better focused elsewhere.

That is why we support Lords amendment 8, a Labour Front-Bench amendment in the name of my noble Friend Lord Coaker. The amendment would require the Government to report on the timetable for removing inadmissible asylum seekers under the Illegal Migration Act 2023. We need to see accountability on the inadmissibility provisions that have created the perma-backlog of 56,000 small boat asylum seekers who are stuck in limbo and are unable to be processed.

If 99% of the people crossing in small boats are not likely to be sent to Rwanda, perhaps the Minister can tell us what will happen to them. Will he admit that, despite all his bluff and bluster, they will simply be let into our asylum system after all? No? The premise of inadmissibility was always that it is a one-way street to limbo and shambles, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, and I have continually warned Ministers in this Chamber over the past two years.

Of course, there is an alternative. I hope that Conservative Members have been listening because, for the past 18 months, my right hon. Friend and I have been absolutely clear from this Dispatch Box how Labour will prevent the dangerous and life-threatening channel crossings, and how we will fix our broken asylum system. I have already mentioned how we would redirect the money set aside for the Rwandan Government into a cross-border police unit, an intelligence-sharing security partnership with Europol, in order to smash the criminal smuggling gangs upstream.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. He says he wants removals to a safe third country. Which one?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am very sorry, but would the hon. Member mind repeating that?

[Kevin Foster]

It is always good to listen to an intervention, but I will repeat it for him. He said that one part of his plan was to remove people to a safe third country. Simply question: if not Rwanda, which one?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I apologise; I should have said “home country.” I would like to correct the record. It was “home country”. Apologies; I mis-spoke.

Labour’s common-sense, pragmatic plan will smash the business model of the criminal gangs, deter dangerous journeys and tackle the backlog.

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will now run through the remaining nine amendments from the other place. We support each of them for the reasons I will now set out.

[Dr Luke Evans]

How much would Labour’s plan cost?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I have already said—I do not know if the hon. Member was listening—this is about repurposing the vast quantities of taxpayers’ money that are being squandered on the hare-brained Rwanda plan. The re-channelling of that money will fund the clearance of the backlog, sort out returns and smash the criminal gangs.

I would first like to focus on Lords amendment 10, tabled by the noble Lord Browne, which seeks to exempt individuals who have worked in support of the UK Government or armed forces from removal to Rwanda under the provisions of the Bill. The amendment is driven by a moral imperative: we owe a debt of gratitude to those who have supported our defence, diplomacy and development abroad, not least in Afghanistan. It beggars belief that the Government would even consider sending this cohort of heroes, who are fleeing the Taliban, to Rwanda. Britain’s commitment towards these loyal-to-Britain Afghans is, of course, felt most strongly by our own armed forces, but the Government have continually shirked their responsibilities towards Afghans, including by leaving thousands who have a right to be in the UK stranded in Pakistan for more than a year. It is little wonder that they have resorted to making desperate journeys across the channel. Operation Warm Welcome has become “Operation Cold Shoulder.”

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman says that he wants more Afghan people to come from Pakistan to the UK. How many more immigrants does he want to come to the UK from Afghanistan?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The amendment is about stopping them being sent to Rwanda, but let us be absolutely clear: there are many, many Afghans, identified by the Government under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, who are languishing in Pakistan. We remember the Prime Minister’s memo to Whitehall saying, “By the way everybody, let’s slow peddle on these Afghans who are in Pakistan and have been identified for resettlement under the ACRS and ARAP.” If the hon. Member wants to know the number, I recommend that he goes to his own Government and asks how many have been identified under ARAP and ACRS.

[Rushanara Ali]

In my constituency I have met one family in a similar situation. The constituent’s husband had been killed in Afghanistan, but the family were still in limbo because of the delay in decision making. Is my hon. Friend aware that Pakistan is now forcing Afghan asylum seekers back to Afghanistan? There are tens of thousands of people in that situation, some of whom worked to support our forces during the war in Afghanistan.

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The scope of Lords amendment 10 is specifically for those who served shoulder to shoulder with our armed forces and in our diplomatic and development efforts in Afghanistan. These are people to whom the United Kingdom owes a debt of honour and a debt of gratitude. I am not sure whether honour is a word that we can apply very easily to those on the Conservative Benches, but that is what this is about.

Lords amendment 9, in the name of the noble Baroness Butler-Sloss, is also based on a moral imperative, as it would prevent the removal of potential victims of modern slavery to Rwanda until they receive a decision from the Government on whether there is credible evidence that the person is a modern slavery victim. It really should go without saying that modern slavery victims should not be sent to Rwanda but, sadly, with this Government, basic moral decency is a scarce commodity.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Let me speak to Lords amendments 9 and 10. Those of us who have dealt with trafficked victims and those who served us in Afghanistan feel that there is some loss of moral compass somewhere. Those who served us in Afghanistan, in a whole range of different functions, have only just survived getting out of the country. They have been chased by the Taliban and their families have been harassed. Some of them got to Pakistan and were then threatened with force back over the border again. They have got to us traumatised, and we are going to traumatise them again by sending them to Rwanda. That cannot be right. I cannot believe that any hon. Member who has dealt with such cases could not support these amendments, because it is human suffering in the extreme, and for those who have served us, it is human suffering brought about by their loyalty to us.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes the case with passion and conviction. I know that he has a number of asylum seekers and refugees in his constituency and he does a huge amount of work on their behalf. He is absolutely right: there are some issues that should really transcend the day-to-day political considerations that we have in this place, because they are issues that are based on moral imperatives. It is deeply disappointing that, in Lords amendments 9 and 10, the Government have refused even to use them as the basis for negotiation or some kind of compromise. We find that deeply disappointing.

[Sammy Wilson]

With regard to the earlier question of how many, does the hon. Member not agree that the simple answer is, “All those who served and who risked their lives to help us in a war that required the support of the local population”? We have records of the help and support they gave. Surely we cannot turn our back on those people if they are in danger.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said. What a contrast there is between his intervention and that of the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) from the Conservative Benches. I genuinely believe that when the hon. Member for Rother Valley reflects, he will regret making his intervention and perhaps reflect on what the right hon. Gentleman has just said.

We on the Opposition Benches are profoundly concerned about unaccompanied children being inadvertently sent to Rwanda. For this reason, we support Lords amendment 7, in the name of the noble Baroness Lister, which reverses changes to age assessment procedures established by the Illegal Migration Act 2023 in relation specifically to removals to Rwanda. It restores the ability of domestic courts and tribunals to fully consider suspensive judicial review claims regarding removal decisions taken on the basis of age assessment of unaccompanied children.

Lords amendments 1 to 6 all relate to the rule of law. We support all of those amendments, and they are all principles with which Government Ministers have said they agree. Indeed, the simple question that should be asked in relation to each one of these amendments is this: if Ministers believe that Rwanda is a safe country, then why are the Government refusing to support these amendments? They say that the Bill abides by international law, so why not make that clear in the Bill? They say that Rwanda is a safe country and is meeting its obligations, so let us see the evidence and agree a “trust but verify” mechanism. In that spirit, Lords amendment 1 is a Labour Front-Bench amendment that places a responsibility on the Government to comply in full with their current obligations under domestic and international law.

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that amendment 1 is entirely otiose? In terms of compliance with domestic law, the Bill when enacted will be an element of domestic law. In terms of compliance with international law, is it not the case that the Bill is predicated on international law—that is to say, the Rwanda treaty?

[Stephen Kinnock]

If that is the case, why will Ministers not accept the amendment? Those in the other place, who have a great deal more constitutional expertise than I have, are simply seeking reassurance that our democratic conventions and obligations in relation to alignment with the rule of law will be respected. If that is the case, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, surely the amendments should be perfectly acceptable to the Government.

[Stella Creasy]

Perhaps I can help to shed light on this. The Minister has just shown that the Government are not abiding by their international obligations. The Good Friday agreement explicitly commits us to working together—those words are in it—with the Irish Government when it comes to the rights of individuals in Northern Ireland. The Bill will deny rights to individuals in Northern Ireland, yet the Minister admitted that the Government have not even consulted the Irish Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that our word is our bond as a country, and if we show that we cannot be trusted to stand up for international law, it is right that this place demands that the Government put it in the Bill?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a very clear case. A lot of rhetoric has accompanied the Bill around the European convention on human rights and the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law. The implications of that for the Good Friday agreement are truly chilling. The way in which Government Members are prepared to sabre-rattle, and to use rhetoric in a way that undermines our reliability as a partner that can be trusted to respect our international legal obligations, is frankly shameful and deeply concerning, not least in the case of the Good Friday agreement.

Lords amendments 2 and 3, in the name of the noble Lord Hope, state that Rwanda may be considered a safe country only if and when the measures set out

“in the Rwanda treaty have been fully implemented”

and the monitoring committee has established that that is the case. The Government claim that the measures in the treaty address concerns in the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, so there is absolutely no reason why Ministers should refuse to accept Lord Hope’s amendments.

Lords amendments 4 and 5, in the name of the noble Lord Anderson, state that Rwanda can be considered a safe country unless there is

“credible evidence to the contrary”,

as determined by a court or tribunal. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Government themselves accepted that the situation in Rwanda is not static but evolving, as it is in every country on the face of the Earth. If the Government accept that Rwanda could one day become safer for asylum seekers who are sent there from the UK, they must by definition accept that it could one day deteriorate. Lord Anderson’s amendments simply provide a basis for assessing the situation on the ground in Rwanda and acting accordingly.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

A joint statement signed by over 260 civil society organisations has branded the Bill

“a constitutionally extraordinary and deeply harmful piece of legislation. It threatens the universality of human rights and is likely in breach of international law, striking a serious blow to the UK’s commitment to the rule of law.”

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill represents an unethical gimmick that will potentially put very vulnerable people at risk and harm the UK’s reputation on the world stage?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If the amount of time and energy that has been wasted on this madcap Bill, which is also a constitutional outrage, unaffordable, unlawful and unworkable, had been put into addressing some of the challenges that we face in a pragmatic way, just think where we could have got to by today.

Finally, Lords amendment 6, in the name of the noble Baroness Chakrabarti, allows Government Ministers, officials and courts to consider whether Rwanda is safe on a case-by-case basis. Given that the Government have accepted that some appeals will be allowed, we see no reason for them to reject that amendment.