To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the financial difficulties facing many local authorities.

My Lords, we have listened carefully to local authorities about the pressures they are facing. That is why, in January, we announced additional measures worth over £600 million. Taking into account the recently announced local government finance settlement, that makes available up to £64.7 billion, an increase of 7.5% in cash terms on last year. The department continually monitors the sector, and we stand ready to talk to any council with concerns about its finances.

My Lords, what the Minister said is of course welcome, but it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the cutbacks local authorities have faced since 2010. The Government keep talking about cutting taxes in a forthcoming Budget, but is not the real issue that council tax payers also pay taxes? Surely, council tax increases will have to make up for cuts in income tax. This is not honest.

My Lords, for many years we have had a cap on council tax increases. It remains at 2.99% for the general fund, with 2% extra for councils that want more money for social care funding. However, the department is establishing an expert panel to advise local government and the department on local government financial sustainability into the future. The panel will include the LGA and the Office for Local Government, and we look forward to its findings.

My Lords, the local authorities that have so far gone bankrupt and applied for Section 114 have, by and large, been the authors of their own misfortune. Is my noble friend the Minister aware that many well-run upper-tier authorities—controlled by all parties—are now running out of road? Will not whoever wins the next election have to undertake a major review of local government finance? The current regime of overreliance on government grants, rate capping and an out-of-date council tax is simply unsustainable.

I agree with much of what my noble friend said. In December 2022, the Government ruled out reform of the local government finance system in this Parliament in response to the sector calling for stability and certainty from local government. However, this Government are committed to reforming the local government funding landscape in the next Parliament.

My Lords, I stress the need to review the local government financial settlements and support systems. In the case of a city such as Birmingham, even if increasing the council tax were realistic, a quarter of households—some 461,000 —are eligible for council tax support, and of those, 75,000 pay no council tax at all. Over the next two years, the city is facing a budget gap of some £300 million. Does the Minister agree that the structure needs to be reviewed and that individual circumstances have to be taken into account?

I repeat that we have said that we will look at funding in the next Parliament. There is an 18% increase in budgets per dwelling in the most deprived areas, compared to the least deprived. Through the settlement, places such as Birmingham are getting a lot more money.

My Lords, councils have been receiving money from the Government’s household support fund, which has provided many thousands of families with essential sharp-end help with their bills and food, for example. However, it is due to end at the end of March. Will the Government seriously consider extending that effective and targeted support for at least another year? Have they taken into account the increase in child poverty they anticipate will result from the withdrawal of this much-needed, much-used fund?

The noble Baroness is right to say that the current household support fund runs out on 31 March. However, the Government continue to keep all existing programmes under review in the usual way.

My Lords, council tax banding for our 25 million homes in England is based on their estimated market value in 1991. So, a two-bedroom flat in London, where property values have gone through the roof, falls in the same band as its equivalent in the north of England; a £1 million home is charged 0.2% of its value; and on average, one worth £250,000 is charged 0.6%. This year, 46% of households in England will receive a bigger council tax bill than Buckingham Palace. Does the Minister think that our council tax formula is regressive and needs reforming?

As I said, in the next Government we will look at all these local government financing issues. We agree that that is long overdue, but the sector itself did not want that to happen in 2022.

My Lords, does my noble friend recall that we promised we would fix social care? The problem for local authorities is that the vast majority of their funding goes on providing social care, crowding out other vital services. Until we address the issue of social care, this problem will get worse, and it is worst in those local authorities where the tax base is lowest and the demand is greatest. This is urgently needed, not least because people are not getting the social care they need.

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. We made changes to local government financing in January, and we listened to local government and its priorities: £500 million of the £600 million extra that was given is going into social care.

My Lords, this weekend, the Local Government Association Labour Group published its latest version of 101 Achievements of Labour in Power, featuring a huge range of initiatives: street support partnerships tackling homelessness in Leeds, Food On Our Doorstep clubs in Mansfield, delivering over 83,000 square feet of lab space to support life sciences in Stevenage, new models of fostering in South Tyneside, and Plymouth City Council launching the first ever national marine park to support conservation of our seas. Remarkably, all this innovation has taken place against the backdrop of a reduction in core spending power of 11% compared with 2010-11. Is it not time the Government recognised the huge value that people place on local services and worked with the sector to deliver a sustainable funding model to support them?

The Government do appreciate what local government can do, and it is not just Labour local government that is delivering this innovation and great services for local people. At this point, I should thank local government for everything it does. As I said earlier, we listen to local authorities all the time, which is why we put in £600 million more in January.

My Lords, may I return to the issue of reforming the model? I have recently been caught up in discussions with Suffolk County Council about funding cuts it was making to its arts programmes. That drew me into detailed discussions about what its priorities were and the challenges it was facing. It said that two things would make a huge difference. The first was knowing further in advance what it might receive; it was looking for a three-year projection. The second was for the groundwork for the reform to which the Minister has been referring to be done now, rather than in the future.

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right: local government is asking for reform of the whole system, but it is also asking for certainty for future years. Recognising the importance of this, the Government intend to return to multi-year settlements in the next Parliament when circumstances allow.

My Lords, I am sure the Minister agrees that for 10 years, the Government made very severe cuts and, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, there was increased demand for social care services. The result is that the non-statutory services have borne all the cuts. Services for young people, family support and libraries—I could go on—have all been severely cut and continue to be so. I lend my support, for what it is worth, to the Minister. Local government finance really is in desperate need of a fundamental review.

I have already agreed that this will happen in the next Parliament under a Conservative Government. However, as we have heard from the noble Baroness opposite, not all councils have stopped non-statutory services. Many of them are running their businesses very efficiently and keeping all those services going.

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the announcement that Takeda Pharmaceuticals plans to withdraw Mobocertinib from market, what steps they are taking to ensure that lung cancer patients have access to the medicines they need.

My Lords, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is engaging with Takeda Pharmaceuticals to ensure that, where appropriate, patients receiving Mobocertinib have access, following the company’s decision to withdraw it from the market globally. Mobocertinib is not licensed in Northern Ireland but has been available through the Northern Ireland MHRA authorised route and can be supplied as an unlicensed medicine for existing patients after it is withdrawn. Alternative treatments for new NHS patients may include NICE-recommended immuno- therapies, such as Nivolumab, or chemotherapy.

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that this drug is due to be withdrawn from the UK market in March, despite the results of the recent EXCLAIM-2 trial, which showed that it can be as effective as chemotherapy, with no safety concerns. It is currently the only drug in the UK that is licensed for use in exon 20 patients who have the rare subtype EGFR-positive lung cancer. Removing it from the market means that these patients will have no treatment options open to them beyond chemotherapy, which will certainly reduce lifespan and increase mortality rates. On behalf of those patients, I plead with the Minister to work with Takeda to deliver a compassionate use policy for all exon 20 patients, including, crucially, those who cannot yet take the drug, to serve as a pathway for them to access it while waiting for an alternative treatment.

My Lords, I share the noble Lord’s disappointment that the company has taken the decision to withdraw Mobocertinib from the market globally. I understand that this decision was taken after the treatment failed to meet its primary end-points in the phase 3 EXCLAIM-2 trial. I assure the noble Lord that, for existing patients, and through a compassionate use scheme for new patients, although this drug was the only NICE-recommended treatment targeted for exon 20 patients, alternative NICE-recommended immunotherapies may be appropriate treatments for patients at the same stage in the disease pathway.

My Lords, frequently in the House questions have been raised about the shortage and accessibility of some drugs to NHS patients. With this drug, there are concerns around its efficacy and effectiveness. How is the issue being communicated to patients who are using this drug, because they are vulnerable consumers and patients? How will the Government ensure the efficacy of other drugs and treatments in its place?

My noble friend raises a very important point about communication. When patients are in receipt of drugs and surgery, it is a very vulnerable time, and it is important they are communicated to in an appropriate manner. Takeda has worked closely with the MHRA, the NHS, and the clinical and patient communities to ensure that details of the withdrawal have been appropriately communicated to the lung cancer community. There is also a direct communication to healthcare professionals, to be distributed together with details of compassionate use programmes. This drug will still be available currently and in the future. Regarding efficacy, it is important that, when drugs are brought to the market, they are successful and do what they were brought on the market to do. If that is not the case, they need to come to an end, unfortunately.

The Minister is correct when he says the drug is being withdrawn because it did not meet the end-point. We should remember that the drug was marketed with advanced approval because the phase 2 trials were so effective. Because this drug is being withdrawn worldwide and there are alternatives available, it is important that NICE revises its guidance to include other drugs, including other immunotherapies that are effective for non-small cell carcinoma, which this drug was approved for.

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his lifelong service to the community and to this House. He raises a very good point. On the one hand, NICE is clear that there are alternatives to this drug, but it will still be available to current patients. I take on board what the noble Lord says, and I will report it back to the department.

My Lords, following on from the previous question, and given the importance of speed of access to treatment for cancer sufferers, can the Minister explain what the Government are doing to speed up the process for NICE approvals for new cancer drugs and how that process is being tied into the MHRA licensing process, so that they can run in parallel, rather than one having to wait for the other?

The noble Lord raises a good point, and I agree with it. Since 2016, the cancer drugs fund, worth £340 million per year, has delivered faster access for tens of thousands of NHS patients to some of the most promising new cancer medicines—in some cases, up to eight months faster, including for Pembrolizumab and Selpercatinib. These are two very important drugs, and the hope is that they will be successful moving forward. Only time will tell, but the Government are committed to introducing life-saving drugs.

The Pharmaceutical Journal found last year that inequity of access through the compassionate use programme has become a significant issue, with some trusts not using the programme at all. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that new and existing patients across the country will be able to access Mobocertinib and other treatments for lung cancer?

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. As I have outlined in my previous answers, to the best of my knowledge, the existing drug will be allowed but some of the newer ones will be introduced and available. If the noble Baroness knows of specific trusts that do not make this available, I ask her to please let me know and I will look into it.

I declare my interest as chair of Genomics England and a board member at BioNTech. Access to therapeutics is critical, but the earliest possible diagnosis is crucial for survivability. Although the new lung cancer screening programme is welcome, I draw the Minister’s attention to a paper published in the Lancet this month which said that, although it does have favourable participation and will improve lung cancer outcomes overall, it is still showing inequalities by smoking, deprivation and ethnicity. What steps are the Government are taking to address this?

I am grateful to my noble friend, but am not familiar with the paper to which she refers. On her specific question, the Government are focusing on areas of social deprivation. She mentions that this is preventable; the Prime Minister has made it one of his key tasks to stop the next generation of smokers even becoming smokers. We can all do more with our personal health: giving up smoking is an obvious one, but we could also be eating better and staying fitter. There is more to be done, particularly in areas of social deprivation.

My Lords, as pharmaceutical industries in Northern Ireland make a vital contribution to the supply of drugs and medicines in our country, should these drugs not be allowed to circulate freely through Britain’s internal market?

My noble friend raises an important point. The drug supply is available, albeit through different areas—for example, the Northern Ireland MHRA. As I indicated in my previous answer, if a drug is available in England, it is also available in Northern Ireland. There is no reason why anybody in Northern Ireland should not be in receipt of life-saving drugs.

To ask His Majesty’s Government what proportion of the £36 billion transport investment plan ‘Network North’ will be allocated to schemes outside the Northern region.

My Lords, £36 billion of funding redirected from HS2 will see improvements to transport throughout the country. Every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the north, every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands, and the £6.5 billion saved through our rescoped approach at Euston will be spread across every other region of the country.

My Lords, the Minister knows that this document, Network North, is supposed to compensate the Midlands and the north for the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham by providing lots of other rail schemes more quickly. Will the Minister publish a list of these new schemes, which does not seem to be available at the moment, with estimates of the cost of each one and when they are likely to be operational? Will he tell us how he calculates the £36 billion that he says will be saved by the cancellation of HS2 north, bearing in mind that millions—possibly billions—have already been spent and now wasted? Finally, how can a document called Network North include among its proposals the promise of a new station at Tavistock?

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his Question. I will have to look at his point on the calculation and come back with an answer; I do not have the figures broken down in front of me. Network North will deliver a wide range of rail infrastructure investments across the country. While I have already given the exact figures for what we will spend on the northern leg of HS2 and have committed to the Midlands leg, we are also building a brand-new station and line connection in Bradford, with journey times reduced from 56 to 30 minutes to Manchester via Huddersfield. We are better connecting major cities across the north, with more frequent trains, increased capacity and faster journeys, expanding the network. We will upgrade connections between Manchester and Sheffield, Leeds and Sheffield, Leeds and Hull, and Hull and Sheffield. We will fully fund the Midlands rail hub, increasing investment to £1.75 billion and connecting more than 50 stations. We will upgrade the rail links between Newark and Nottingham, halving journey times between Nottingham and Leeds. I could go on, but I am very happy to write to the noble Lord with more detail.

My Lords, I was pleased to see, towards the end of the Network North report, mention of the A75 and the A77 in Scotland. Those are very important roads for Northern Ireland travellers going to England and Glasgow. Can the Minister update us on that, because it is important for United Kingdom connectivity?

Scotland will benefit from funding to deliver targeted improvements on the A75 between Gretna and Stranraer, which is one of the main routes from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland via the Cairnryan ferry. The UK Government have committed to providing £8 million development funding to the Scottish Government for a detailed feasibility study to develop options to improve the A75, and made it a priority action in our response to the Union Connectivity Review of 7 December last year. Additionally, as part of the announcements in Network North on 4 October, the UK Government have committed to provide funding to deliver targeted improvements to the A75, pending a business case being submitted by the Scottish Government.

My Lords, I remind the House that, when HS2 was cancelled, the Prime Minister said that,

“we’ll reinvest every single penny, £36 billion, into hundreds of transport projects in the North”.

and the Midlands. Yet the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, sent us a letter telling us that some of the money, £8.4 billion, would be spent on pothole alleviation across the country, including in such great northern counties as Wiltshire, and that only 31 of 70 road schemes that would be given the go-ahead were in the north and Midlands.

Following on from my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Question, will the Minister write to me with a list of the business cases for new public transport investment that have been presented to the Treasury since this announcement was made in October? How many of these business cases have been approved? I think that a lot would be. On this side of the House, many of us believe that the Government are holding back public investment so that they can justify tax cuts within their fiscal rules.

I will be very happy to write to the noble Lord and give him an explanation of where the money is going. The Prime Minister said:

“Every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the Northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the North; every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands; and the full £6.5 billion saved through our rescoped approach at Euston will be spread across every other region in the country”.

My Lords, on 20 November the Minister wrote to us explaining how £8.3 billion—already down from the £8.4 billion specified in the letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Vere—would be divided up among local authorities across Britain for use on road projects. A third of that money is going to local authorities in the south of England. Can the Minister explain to us whether, in future allocations, a third of that money will go to the south of England? Can he explain why no money at all is going to Wales? The Government specified that HS2 would be of great benefit to Wales for our links with the north of England. Now that those links will never be created, Wales is at a disadvantage as a result.

I think the noble Baroness must have missed the fact that £1 billion is being spent on improving the north Wales line through electrification. In November we announced the £8.3 billion of truly additional highways maintenance funding over the period from 2023 to 2034. The next thing is for local road surfacing and wider highways maintenance. That covers £3.3 billion for local authorities in the north-west, the north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber, £2.2 billion for those in the West Midlands and the east Midlands, and £2.8 billion for those in the east of England, the south-east, the south-west and London.

My Lords, I welcome the investment in the north and the Midlands, particularly the improvement between Newark and Nottingham. I am very aware that East Anglia is not quite in the north of England but, if I may make a plug, can my noble friend the Minister give us an update on any extra funding or resources going into improving rail services in my home county of Cambridgeshire?

My Lords, the Ely area capacity enhancement programme comprises a series of infrastructure upgrades to increase rail freight and passenger capacity in the east of England. Ely is a key hub on the cross-country freight route from Felixstowe to the north Midlands. The other, via London, is at operating capacity. Existing infrastructure in the area and its layout limit the ability to operate additional passenger and freight services. The approximate cost for full delivery of the programme would be £550 million. The scheme would increase freight capacity into the Port of Felixstowe from 36 to 42 trains per day, but the good news is that this would be expected to remove 98,000 lorry journeys per year from the roads.

Will the Minister arrange for himself and his colleagues to have geography lessons?

I happen to have an O-level in it.

I am glad to hear that the Minister is interested in removing lorries from roads. The major problem on the trans-Pennine links is lack of rail capacity. The M62 is jammed with trucks carrying containers between the east and west coasts. Unless there are new rail paths across the Pennines, nothing will change. Are there any plans to reinstitute the idea of a new rail line between Manchester and Leeds?

That is something I am not aware of at the moment, but I will certainly look into it and come back to the noble Lord.

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of new food import requirements on (1) domestic producers, and (2) food safety.

My Lords, the controls set out in our new border target operating model, BTOM, represent a comprehensive assessment of the biosecurity and public health risks presented by imports, together with the risks of relevant pests and diseases. They allow us to assess our confidence in the exporting country’s production standards and health controls. The BTOM aims to strike the right balance between allowing trade to flow and protecting our domestic producers from threats such as African swine fever.

My Lords, April’s post-Brexit import controls come after numerous delays and redesigns, and against a backdrop of a shortage of vets to check consignments and hauliers to move them. The port of Dover is concerned that the decision to have physical checks so far from its border will enable illicit activity between the two sites. Domestic producers are worried that, as they face higher input costs and labour shortages, EU farmers will be able to undercut them. How can the Minister guarantee that British farmers will benefit from these reforms and that there will be no undermining of our high welfare and food safety standards?

I thank the noble Baroness for her extensive question. The purpose of the BTOM is to provide that balance between the necessity to check for our biosecurity and allowing trade to happen. Specifically on Sevington, since 2022 the Government have provided funding to all port health authorities, including Dover, to support Border Force, which has the responsibility for checks on illegal imports. The Government recognise the rise in illegal imports, particularly pork, from eastern Europe, which is why we continue to provide additional funding to district port health authorities. With the introduction of BTOM, many of the Dover Port Health Authority’s duties and associated costs will move to Sevington, including the commercial trade checks that are being implemented, hence the reduced funding package for Dover.

Does it not sound like Mrs Thatcher’s belief in the single market was a good idea? Should we not recognise that and stop this nonsense now?

I thank my noble friend. The last time I checked, we collectively voted to leave the European Union. The Government’s job is to implement the biosecurity checks to make sure that we are protected—not just our farmers and our consumers but the trade deals, which are worth billions of pounds a year to the UK economy.

My Lords, could the Minister find in his briefing pack the several occasions on which the European Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House has recommended that there should be an SPS agreement with the European Union? If he looked at that, could he answer this question: how many of the new controls being imposed would be required if we had an SPS agreement with the European Union?

The noble Lord raises a very good point. I do not have the exact details of the requirement he is asking for, so perhaps the best thing I can do is write to him on that.

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register. The Minister will be aware that we import 45% of the food in this country, and surely one of the lessons from the Ukraine war is the added emphasis on food security. Can the Minister say something about import substitution, and can he also give the House some assurance that the sustainable farming incentive does not always prioritise environmental schemes over food production?

I thank my noble friend for his question. The Government take the issue of food security extremely seriously, and we are absolutely committed to producing high-quality British food for British consumers. Getting the balance right between what we produce through our SFI programme—or our ELMS programme, I should probably say—is a fine judgment between getting the environmental and biodiversity improvements we all want to see, and producing food for the country.

My Lords, with beef and pork exports to the EU down by more than 20%, and the import of apples down 16.8% and oranges down 18.2%, what steps are the Minister and his Defra colleagues taking to ensure that, first, British farmers are not going out of business, and, secondly, supplies of essential foods are protected for the British consumer?

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. As I say, the Government are completely committed to domestic food production. I do not see that the introduction of the BTOM system has any bearing on what we import or export into or out of the UK.

My Lords, the Minister recently announced that meat imported through Dover will be checked at Ashford, which is about 15 miles upcountry. How is anybody going to stop the trucks from going straight up the motorway rather than turning left at Ashford? Will there be any enforcement, or are they just trusting people?

I thank the noble Lord for his question. It is important to differentiate between what is happening at the port of Dover and what is happening at Sevington. If you go to Sevington, you follow a system by completing the new electronic IPAFFS, which is designed for commercial imports. What is checked at Dover by Border Force is illegal imports. Now, you are not going to be sent to Sevington if you are illegally importing something; you go to Sevington only if you are following the Government’s designated procedures.

My Lords, has Brexit given any kind of boost to the production of apples in our country —those wonderful varieties Coxes, Pippins, Beauty of Bath and so on? I must say that I have not noticed any change since 2020.

I thank my noble friend for the question. I am afraid I am not an expert on apple varieties across the UK, but I know that there has been quite a lot of emphasis in government policy of late to widen the breadth of our different types of seeds and trees. I am sure that apples will be on the list; I will check for him.

My Lords, may I take the Minister back to his answer to the question from my noble friend Lord Berkeley? Perhaps I am very stupid, but I found it quite difficult to understand what he was telling us about the difference between what will happen in Dover and what will happen at the new facility outside Ashford. If people are being checked at Dover, what is then happening at Ashford? What is to prevent—this is the question he was asked—lorries leaving Dover that should be going to Ashford not doing so?

I hope I can clarify that for the noble Baroness. If you are commercially importing goods into the UK, you are following a system where you fill out an electronic form and that form identifies whether you are in the high, medium or low-risk category and whether you are going to be selected for a check at Sevington. When you arrive at the Port of Dover in your lorry, you will be notified that you have been selected for a check, and that information goes from the Port of Dover to Sevington. Sevington is then expecting to see the delivery arrive there shortly thereafter. That is entirely different from a white van arriving with illegally imported products—let us just call it pork—from eastern Poland. That is checked by Border Force at the port of Dover. So you have Border Force and you have border control posts, and they perform different functions.

My Lords, can the Minister confirm whether the necessary professionals are still being recruited in order to provide this service? What percentage of capacity will be available on day one? Will it be 100%, 50% or what?

I thank the noble Lord for his question. Having been down to visit Sevington myself, I can assure him that we are in the advanced stages of recruitment there. I fully anticipate that, by the time we are up and running for checks at the end of April this year, we will have a full complement of staff. As to whether we are going to go straight to 100% checks, the answer to that is no, we are probably not. We are going to monitor the situation and will be in control, through the IPAFF system, of the number of vehicles that we direct to Sevington for their checks.

That Baroness Bakewell be appointed a member of the Select Committee, in place of Baroness Jones of Whitchurch.

That Baroness Hughes of Stretford be appointed a member of the Select Committee.

That Lord Berkeley be appointed a member of the Select Committee.

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 12 December 2023 be approved.

Considered in Grand Committee on 13 February.

That the draft Order laid before the House on 18 December 2023 be approved.

Considered in Grand Committee on 13 February.

That the Regulations laid before the House on 22 January be approved.

Relevant document: 12th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 13 February.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be taking part remotely. I remind the Committee that unless they are leading a group remote speakers speak first after the mover of the lead amendment in the group and may therefore speak to other amendments in the group ahead of Members who tabled them.

Clause 2: Safety of the Republic of Rwanda

Amendment 18

My Lords, as we enter day two and the world of fantasy and fiction on the Bill, which is based on the premise of an untruth, I am the fiction of my noble friend Lord German—his substitute. I am a poor substitute; all the same, he unfortunately cannot be in his place today.

Amendments 18, 23 and 47 in this group, which are in my noble friend’s name and to which I have added mine, seek to ensure that Rwanda is not to be conclusively treated as a safe country where there are persons to be removed who are an unaccompanied child, a victim of human trafficking or a victim of modern slavery. Amendment 47 builds on this by ensuring that decision-makers must specifically consider circumstances where

“an individual … is … an unaccompanied child … a victim of human trafficking, or … a victim of modern slavery”

when they consider individual cases.

It is important that the courts can do this because anyone who clicks on the signatories to UN treaties, to see which countries have signed up to them, will see that there are significant and optional treaties at the UN, based not just on the rights that are required but the type of inquiry carried out on those individuals, which Rwanda has not signed up to. This is therefore significant for some of the most vulnerable people, who should be afforded extra protection because of the lack of protection that Rwanda provides them.

The amendments in this group in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, also seek to protect victims of modern slavery and of human trafficking. They are drafted in a more comprehensive manner. In a later group, we will focus more specifically on children.

At Second Reading, a number of noble Lords highlighted that the vulnerable are not at all protected in the Bill. Indeed, the Bill places at risk the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, to which Rwanda is not a signatory, given that victims of modern slavery and trafficking are among those who face forced removal to Rwanda. The obligations include the duty to investigate without delay and to take operational measures to protect potential victims, where there are sufficient indicators available of circumstances which give rise to credible suspicion—I emphasise “suspicion”—of a real risk of trafficking and exploitation.

Further, according to the US Department of State’s 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, Rwanda does not

“fully meet the … minimum standards … for the elimination of trafficking”.

The 2023 Global Slavery Index tells us that the prevalence of modern slavery in Rwanda is more than twice as high as it is in the UK. The previous Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner raised concerns that Rwanda has detained thousands of potential trafficking victims without conducting adequate screening or referring identified victims to proper care and assistance; that in 2021 Rwanda investigated fewer trafficking cases and prosecuted and convicted fewer traffickers compared with the previous year; and that it

“lacked a victim-witness support program”.

We are deeply concerned that survivors will not be seen as safe in Rwanda, as they would be here in the UK. The aim of our amendment is therefore simple. It is to try to offer a degree of protection to those who are most vulnerable by ensuring that Rwanda is not seen to be conclusively safe for unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking and victims of modern slavery.

I also note that Amendment 75, which my noble friend Lady Smith has signed, tries to ensure that if those brave men and women who have helped our Armed Forces in conflict in areas such as Afghanistan who, because of the incompetence of Home Office schemes, decide to flee here because their lives are in danger, they are not forcibly sent to Rwanda. What a shame on our national reputation that we would do such a thing as a nation.

As I say, the aim is very simple. It is to make sure that these people—unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking and victims of modern slavery—are not sent to Rwanda, because it is not seen as conclusively protective. I know that my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Hamwee will speak in more detail about these categories of vulnerable people, who surely deserve our protection. I beg to move.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, who introduced the amendments in this group. I have signed Amendments 18, 23 and 47, but, like him, I have considerable sympathy with the others. The amendments discussed on Monday focused much on the rule of law and how the Bill sits within that. This group changes the focus to look at the most vulnerable asylum seekers, defined in our Amendments 18, 23 and 47 as unaccompanied children, victims of human trafficking or victims of modern slavery, and says that, for the purposes of this Bill, Rwanda should not be regarded as a safe country.

Noble Lords who worked on the Illegal Migration Act last year will remember that, during that Bill, these were three groups of asylum seeker where there was considerable cross-party concern about the Bill reducing their rights under domestic law and ignoring them under international law. There are amendments to follow that will go into more detail on these cases. I will not speak in detail ahead of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, but Amendments 23 and 47 would set on the face of the Bill, in Clause 2, that these groups of people should always be considered separately and not just with everybody else or as a generic group.

The first group is unaccompanied child asylum seekers. We have had many debates in the last three of four years, in the Nationality and Borders Act and Illegal Migration Act, about difficulties in assessing the age of unaccompanied children. We will come back to that detail next week. It is important to note that, on 22 January, the Guardian reported that at least 1,300 child refugees are at risk after being classified as adults, with some placed in adult jails after the Home Office wrongly assessed their ages. Others were sent to adult hotels without the right support. The Refugee Council, Helen Bamber Foundation and Humans for Rights Network report, Forced Adulthood, says that these children are exposed to “significant” harm. It reported that age assessments can be as short as 10 minutes. The consequences for these young people, if they are children, are serious. They breach international law, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which this country is a signatory.

For victims of modern slavery and human trafficking —I will not go into the detail of the excellent introduction by my noble friend Lord Scriven—I share my noble friend’s concerns. I note that this Government appear to have a short memory. In the Modern Slavery Act 2015, promoted by the then Home Secretary Theresa May, an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner was created to improve and better co-ordinate the response to modern slavery. It introduced a defence for victims of slavery and trafficking, placed a duty on the Secretary of State to produce stat guidance on victim identification and victims’ services, and enabled the Secretary of State to make regulations relating to the identification of and support for victims. That is why the simplistic processing proposed in this Bill is completely inappropriate and why the Government need to respond to these amendments, as well as those proposed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in this group. We have a duty as a nation to take care of the most vulnerable asylum seekers.

I also support Amendment 75 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, which my noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham has supported. It is unconscionable for us not to recognise the very particular circumstances of those who have supported our troops in the most difficult circumstances.

This Government used to believe in supporting asylum seekers, particularly the most vulnerable, and had processes by which they could do so, but they clearly do not anymore. Can the Minister explain to your Lordships’ Committee why this U-turn has happened and on what basis it is appropriate to disregard the rules they created less than 10 years ago?

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 70, 73 and 85. I support the other amendments in this group. I declare an interest as co-chair of the parliamentary group on modern slavery and vice-chair of the Human Trafficking Foundation. The purpose of my amendments is to draw attention to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the plight of victims of modern slavery trafficked to the United Kingdom, to ensure greater transparency and to put in place appropriate structures of due diligence and accountability.

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord German, could not move the amendment in his name. I can tell that House that he is a marvellous chairman of the Parliament Choir and has an unrivalled ability to speak the poetry of Dylan Thomas with all the Welsh fervour that it demands.

I understand the good intentions of those who are putting forward the amendments in this group, but I fear they suffer from a real difficulty. In particular, in Amendment 23 the new subsection (1A)(c) would exempt a person who is

“a victim of human trafficking”.

The problem with that is that it drives a coach and horses through the Government’s intentions, which are, of course, to draw the category for exceptions extremely narrowly, so that most people do go to Rwanda, and therefore it is a definite deterrent to people leaving France and trying to get to this country as illegal immigrants. That is the whole point of the legislation, and it needs that sharpness and narrowness of exclusivity to achieve that aim. I fear that, in the hands of any sensible immigration lawyer, simply saying that the person might be a victim of human trafficking opens the whole thing to abuse.

I make that point because I have just been reading in the newspaper this morning that the Home Office is about to buy, or has bought, 16,000 homes in this country to house those illegal asylum seekers who are at the moment in hotels. It wishes to transfer those people, because of the public cost, to residential houses or flats, and that is what it is proposing to do. This housing they are taking is social housing and private rental housing, particularly in areas such as Bradford, Hull and Teesside, which are low-rent areas and obviously comparatively deprived areas. I think this shows the domestic consequences of allowing in the present number of illegal migrants and why the Government have to bear those in mind as well as our undoubted sympathy for those who may be suffering from human trafficking, slavery and so forth. These factors clearly have to be balanced; the domestic responsibilities of the Government with the concern for illegal immigration of this kind. I hope the House will bear that in mind when it considers these amendments.

Before the noble Lord sits down, can he answer a question? Under Home Office figures, 78% of those people who have been referred to the national referral mechanism for being trafficked or in modern slavery have been successful and, by definition, a woman who is trafficked here—not smuggled but trafficked—will be unaware of the final destination. It will be against her will. How will she be deterred by this Bill?

She will be deterred because the Bill is designed to send people to Rwanda, with a very narrow area of exemptions for those who cannot be sent to Rwanda. That is the way it will operate. Obviously, it will need to be spelled out, and the Government will have to put behind it all the explanations they can through modern social media et cetera to get across the message to the people who are at present in France that there is a real possibility that they will end up not in the UK but in Rwanda. That is how it works. That is how it is supposed to work, and I submit that widening it to all these other possibilities will detract from that deterrent element and therefore destroy the purpose of the Bill, with the domestic consequences that we can see.

My Lords, it is extremely difficult to debate anything in the Bill if the only answer of those who are happy with it is, “It is all very difficult, and therefore we have just got to do it as we are saying, because we really cannot deal with any of the details”. I have to say to my noble friend that the fact that we are talking about people who come to this country not illegally but involuntarily means that we are not talking about people who are going to be deterred by anything. They do not want to come here, so the question is how we deal with those.

I must say I am a bit tired of having to remind this Government of what it means to be a Conservative. I had to do it earlier, on the single market, and I am now doing it on this. We have a reputation in the world because of our Modern Slavery Act. It was a brave and important thing to do. It was welcomed across the whole House. I am proud that it was a Conservative Government who did it. I am not proud that there is a Conservative Government undermining that, when we know that more than three-quarters of those who appeal in these circumstances are found to be right in their appeal.

We also know that appeal is very difficult. We know how many people who are trafficked do not get into the system because of the nature of trafficking. Those of us who sit in our comfortable places might just think, on Ash Wednesday, that this is a moment to reach out to those who are uncomfortable and not able to speak up for themselves. There are few people who are in a worse position than those, so on what possible moral basis do you threaten to send them to a country which has not signed up to the international agreement on modern slavery, has twice as many modern slaves as we do—and we admit that we have many whom we have not traced—and has a history of ignoring this problem? How on earth can we defend that on a moral basis, leave alone a practical one? What the blazes is the use of claiming that there is a deterrent effect when the person you are talking about is not in a position to be deterred because they have been taken up by someone who has made those decisions for them?

I believe we cannot allow the Bill to go through without some serious consideration of this point and make sure that we do not allow our country to be let down in this way.

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 75 in this group, which is in my name and supported by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Coussins and Lady Smith of Newnham. The noble Baronesses have asked me to tender their apologies as they are unable to attend today’s Committee. I confidently expect that they may get an opportunity in later stages of the Bill to explain to your Lordships’ House their reasons for supporting this amendment.

Before I turn to Amendment 75, I wish to make clear my support for the other amendments in this group, those in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I commend them both for tabling these amendments and for the powerful clarity with which they were moved. I am strongly in favour of excluding unaccompanied children, victims of modern slavery and the victims of human trafficking—in fact, I am in favour of excluding those who have no option about where they are from deportation to Rwanda.

These debates are fundamental, even leaving aside the morality of offshoring—or, perhaps more accurately, offloading—a question which has received sufficient attention in your Lordships’ House to require no further explication from me. These decisions on exemption speak to the values we project around the world. Given the political capital that has been invested in the Rwanda scheme, its realisation, were that to occur, will attract a correspondingly large amount of international scrutiny. It is difficult to imagine the global derision and horror that would result from pictures of children and victims of slavery and trafficking being bundled on to flights for forcible removal from the UK, a place in which these vulnerable people have sought sanctuary, to any other country, never mind to one which is not, as we hear, in a condition to look after them and to protect them from the vulnerabilities that caused them to seek sanctuary here in the first place.

I turn to Amendment 75. As the explanatory statement makes clear, the new clause proposed would exempt people who are a very special case—those who have put themselves in harm’s way in support of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, or through working with or for the UK Government overseas—from removal to Rwanda, as well as exempting their partners and dependent family from such removal. Again, I ask your Lordships’ House to consider what message would be sent by the spectacle of someone who has faced peril in service of the UK receiving the reward of forcible removal from the very country for which they risked their life?

Last Monday, 5 February, in the debate on a UQ on the relocation of Afghan special forces, I welcomed—and I repeat that welcome today—the Government’s undertaking to review all the ARAP applications from members of the Afghan special forces, known as the Triples, that have already been deemed ineligible. Some of these very brave men and their families and dependants are hiding in Afghanistan, and others are in Pakistan fearing deportation, and awaiting whether the new Government in Pakistan have the same policy as the previous Government to deport them back to Afghanistan, where they would be in danger of their lives.

My Lords, I support Amendment 75, to which I have added my name. In order not to try the patience of the Committee, I will not repeat all the excellent arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, with which I entirely agree, save to say that if global Britain is to be effective in the world, it will need to form partnerships with and gain support from people in all sorts of different parts of the world, often very difficult and dangerous parts of the world.

In order to garner such support, it will need to be seen as trustworthy. How trustworthy does anybody think we will be seen as if we have taken those who have already served us so faithfully in such difficult circumstances and sent them to Rwanda? So, for those who are not swayed by a sense of moral obligation, I ask them to consider the future effectiveness and safety of the men and women of our Armed Forces who are sent out to do such difficult and dangerous things in these parts of the world.

The noble Lord, Lord Horam, has said that the Government seek to draw very narrowly the definition of the people who are excluded from the provisions of this Bill. Surely, at the very least, those who have put their safety and indeed their very lives on the line in support of this country deserve to fall into that category.

My Lords, no one could disagree with a word of that. I of course support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Browne. It makes me ashamed every time I see stories such as those that he has related. I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend—whatever persona he speaks in—and have added my name to the noble and learned Baroness’s amendment, which is of course about victims of trafficking and modern slavery.

As my noble friend Lady Brinton said, we will come next week to the position of children, which will include the question of age assessment. I hope that somebody in that debate will draw attention to the Government’s references to the young men who are really men, not children, when they come across the channel. I am sure that other noble Lords saw on our television screens the amazing darts player Luke Littler. He looked considerably more than a child—he looked about 35, in fact. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that the amendments from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, drive a coach and horses through the Bill. That is an interesting choice of words; they were the words that Theresa May used about the impact of the recent migration, immigration and asylum Bills.

The noble Lord also criticised the word “might”—that people “might” be in this position. Well, that is because we have a process, which is referred to in the amendment: the national referral mechanism. That is our mechanism for assessing claims of having been trafficked or being a victim of modern slavery and so on. It has its problems, particularly in delays, but it is a careful method of assessment that is not replicated in Rwanda. It involves the support of victims of modern slavery and trafficking, which is not available in Rwanda.

I am no less worried than I was when the Rwanda proposal surfaced. Far from tackling these evils, we are expanding the market and opening it up in that country to further trafficking and re-trafficking. It is a country where modern slavery, as has been said, is a good deal more prevalent than it is in the UK. And it is not just a matter of prevalence, it is a matter of culture—something to which the Supreme Court referred. The culture in Rwanda is not to assess whether people are vulnerable in this area. It shows no demonstration of understanding what modern slavery is or how to assess possible victims. If that sounds technical, it is technical in a way, but it is also about what happens to individuals at a human level. We have heard some very powerful speeches supporting that position.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I support Amendment 75, which was moved so powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and supported by my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup.

While they were speaking, I was struck by one paragraph in the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights which I referred to briefly in our proceedings on Monday: paragraph 119 on page 33. We referred to Afghanistan, and it was in this context:

“We have observed, however, that other nations may be influenced by the way in which the UK treats its international law obligations. For example, we note that the Prime Minister of Pakistan has already referred to the UK’s Rwanda policy in defence of his country’s decision to expel from Pakistan hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have fled from the Taliban regime”.

In reflecting on that, the committee said at paragraph 120:

“The UK has a reputation for respect for human rights and the rule of law, of which we should be proud. Legislation that seeks to disapply or fails to respect international law risks damaging that reputation and encouraging other states who are less respectful of the international legal order”.

My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, with his decades of human rights advocacy, often at personal risk from some of the rather terrifying regimes around the world that he has criticised. It has also been a privilege to sit in this Committee and listen to the contributions, to remind the Committee, from a former Chief of the Defence Staff, a leading jurist, a former chair of the Conservative Party, and, of course, my noble friend, a former Defence Secretary.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, with whom it is always a pleasure to engage, on his coach and horses concern that, on one level, he is quite right. The testimony and stories we have heard in relation to all these exemption amendments—I support them all—do indeed highlight the overall illogicality and cruelty of the Bill. There is no doubt about that, but I do not want to rehearse that.

We established last time that Rwanda is not yet safe for any asylum seeker or refugee. We have already argued, and will argue in subsequent groups, that discretion should not be totally squeezed from the Secretary of State’s hands, that the judiciary should not be ousted, that safety should only be a rebuttable presumption and so on. Their testimony bears witness to all the structural problems of the Bill that need to be tackled.

However, I put it to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, in the light of what we have heard about, for example, children, people who have been enslaved and trafficked against their will or those who have put themselves in harm’s way at the service of the British state, that even if Rwanda becomes safe and one agrees with the noble Lord—I do not, but I am on this journey—that it is acceptable to transport human beings for asylum processing, these groups should never be so transported for the reasons that have so compellingly been given.

Some of them, the children and the trafficked people, had little or no say in their arrival in the UK in the first place. Certainly, deterrence can never speak to them and their situation. Then there is the group that my noble friend Lord Browne so ably addressed; we should not dream of deterring them. We made a promise to them and they have paid for it, many of them in courage and blood. How dare we! I am actually rather ashamed that my noble friend had to table an amendment of that kind at all. The people to whom we made that promise will be spared, only because, when he questioned Ministers on 5 February for a relatively lengthy period, they were not able to explain the position once the Secretary of State’s hands are tied and he is under a statutory duty to send people to Rwanda because they came by an irregular route.

So I say to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, whatever our disagreements about the policy as a whole, the Bill in general and all the amendments that I hope will make it a little better, that he must take a different position over the exemptions in this group.

It has indeed been a remarkable debate, as the noble Baroness says. Her own contribution maintained the high standard that has been set; I shall now lower it. I have two small points to make.

First, I strongly support Amendment 75, so ably addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. It extends the exemption not just to the Armed Forces but to any agent, ally or employee of the Crown abroad. That brings in the British Council and the British high commissions and embassies. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has frequently drawn attention to the endangered staff of the British Council in Afghanistan. I strongly support this amendment.

It is also relevant to note, in the context of Amendment 75, that Rwanda has never granted asylum to any Afghan, whereas our acceptance rate of asylum claims from those arriving by small boats is 99%. That proves that people who have turned up here from Afghanistan asking for asylum have a very real reason to have fled. Our processes have checked that their cases are valid; they are fleeing a risk of persecution. Rwanda’s track record suggests that their reception might not be as unbiased there as it here, even if the changes introduced by the treaty come into effect in Rwanda. So I strongly support Amendment 75 and I hope we all do.

My Lords, I am grateful to all those supporting Amendment 75 and for the speeches on it. I am further grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti—they are all helping us to delve deeper into the legal and moral issues in these amendments. I am particularly grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who has set out her Amendments 70, 73 and 85, to which I have subscribed my name.

This issue is close to my heart, as I speak on behalf of the Church of England on human trafficking and modern slavery issues. I do so from the city of Bristol, with its history of slavery and its current commitment to prevent human trafficking and slavery, including domestically—we train our lay officers to spot the signs of those hiding in plain sight—and to provide refuge for those on their journey through the NRM. I was also particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Deben: I think that I will miss church downstairs, so I am grateful that he has brought church upstairs in his Ash Wednesday words to us about the deep moral issues in our debate today.

I am concerned by the response from the noble Lord, Lord Horam, about drawing the terms of the Bill very tightly. It seems to me that the terms include those who are already victims of crime through human trafficking. This is the nub of my argument: surely it is right to prevent and minimise further risks to people who have already been victims of a crime, as we are obliged to do under national and international law; hence Amendment 70, which would mean that nobody who is thought to be a victim of modern slavery could, as we have heard, be removed to Rwanda, at least before a conclusive decision is made on their case or without assessing what it means for their safety. Such consideration for victims is the least that we can do.

Since the start of 2022, more than 4,000 people who arrived on small boats have entered the national referral mechanism for modern slavery. Under the current proposals, they are both suspected victims of crime and eligible for removal to Rwanda. They may well have been trafficked here against their will, as we have heard, and they are now facing further jeopardy. We need to ensure that this jeopardy is removed, as far as we possibly can. The UK has had until now a world-leading referral system for victims of modern slavery. It is something of which we can be rightly proud. I am concerned, as are others, that the Bill, compounding other recent legislation, puts that world-leading status at risk. Not only are survivors of modern slavery victims of a terrible and traumatic crime but they will now be removed to another country altogether, re-transported to a country which will not, in all probability, treat them well—because the legislation and the treaty do not address concerns that we have heard about today or the concerns of the Global Slavery Index; namely, that the Rwanda Government’s approach to this issue will put those transported there at risk.

Amendments 70, 73 and 85 ensure greater transparency as this legislation is implemented. The amendments mean that we would have a better understanding of the picture of modern slavery as the Bill and treaty are put into effect. As currently drafted, the Bill will have a potentially devastating impact on survivors of modern slavery and our nation’s ability to tackle this crime. Ensuring that the implications of the Bill for victims of modern slavery are subject to ongoing monitoring is the least that we can do. The UK has a strong national referral mechanism but without proper monitoring and transparency worked into the Bill we risk entrenching vulnerabilities and pushing victims back into their original abusers’ hands.

Modern slavery and human trafficking are terrible crimes which represent a traumatic experience. If we are committed to tackling them, monitoring the implications of the Bill for the victims will be fundamental to an ongoing response.

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for not being present at Second Reading. I am afraid that my health has not been great, and I was a bit worried about my blood pressure—which might have been accentuated by listening to the debate. I declare an interest as the chair of the Human Trafficking Foundation.

I have added my name to Amendment 70, tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I do not need to say much because the speeches have been wonderful, except to make a plea to my noble friend the Minister regarding Amendment 75. I have always been proud of this country. However, many have put their lives at risk, and many have suffered the ultimate sacrifice. If we reject looking after them, if we do not allow them this, I am afraid that I will not be so proud of this country or of the party that I am in.

I make a further plea to the Minister and my noble friends. I understand entirely the concern regarding migration. It is happening all over the world—illegal crossings, the small boats and so forth. I understand that but let us not just be so dogmatic that we have not an inch of humanity.

I said that I was the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation, which I am delighted to be. I started off in the other place, listening to my old colleague Anthony Steen, who was passionate about this; listening to him, I realised what the victims go through. Subsequently, I have been lucky, or unlucky, enough to meet many of these victims. It is not a hypothetical thing. Yes, there are some abuses, but how many of those are really abuses? We must not think —I speak particularly to our own Benches—that everybody who claims that they are a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking is trying to get an easy ticket into this country. It is heartbreaking to see those people and listen to their stories.

I tried this with my noble friend who previously held the position; I pestered him about trying to meet some victims. He was lucky enough to return to the Back Benches before I could implement that request. But I say to my noble friend the Minister, and we have heard it from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that he has a great deal of humanity. We cannot not make exceptions. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said with regard to people who have served the Crown, there is another thing with regards to victims of modern slavery, which the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, touched on—that is, prosecutions. If we deport somebody to Rwanda while we are trying to have criminal cases, unless my noble friend assures me otherwise, we are not going to get the evidence to put those modern slavers away. I urge my colleagues, my noble friends, not to be so dogmatic about this. There must be some exceptions. We must show humanity if we can call ourselves British.

My Lords, I will speak briefly about Amendment 75, which the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, introduced so movingly. My noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup added some extremely powerful arguments. I have been raising this issue about those who either fought for us or served us in Afghanistan.

If we were to combine Amendment 75 with a fast-track treatment of the reconsideration which the noble Earl, Lord Minto, told the House a short time ago was now being undertaken for one category of these people—I am seeking confirmation from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, that those who serve the British Council are also included—there would be absolutely no incentive for people in that category to try to cross the channel in boats. Could the Government get on with those two bits of a solution to one part of this problem —one in which, frankly, our honour is at stake?

I want secondly to raise those parts of these amendments — we will come to other ones later in the grouping—that relate to children. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, pointed out that we would be acting in contravention of our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—I sat beside Lady Thatcher when she signed it. We need to take that seriously. Is it not the case that the committee set up by the United Nations to watch over the implementation by all member states of their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child has told us—and we are represented on that committee—that we are acting in contravention of it? Could the Minister perhaps answer that question?

If that is so, I hope that it will inform the response that the Government make to the various amendments, in this group and in other groups, that are designed to meet our obligations under the convention. I hope that we do not go off again into a rather sterile discussion about whether this sovereign Parliament has the right to rip up the obligations it signed itself not all that long ago. I do not think that is the point; the point is about the human beings whose lives are at stake.

I want to pick up on three quick points before the Minister replies. First, on Amendment 75, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that we had a very powerful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, reinforced by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. I want to ask the Minister this question: if it is not possible to put it in the Bill, is it possible for the Secretary of State to make a firm pledge and commitment? I have had the privilege of doing two stints at the Foreign Office and have seen the extraordinary commitment of staff locally engaged by the British Council. In fact, in many of those countries, staff directly employed by the Foreign Office would be outnumbered, probably by 10 to one, by locally engaged staff, who are incredibly loyal to the Crown and this country, never more so than in Afghanistan, where we had not only a larger cohort of locally engaged staff than in most countries but the defence angle as well, with British-trained Afghan defence force members and special forces whom we trained. I urge the Minister to look at this seriously.

One point that occurred to me is that many illegal refugees who arrive in this country, asylum seekers, tear up their documents. Many of them deny all knowledge of where they have come from, and we have no idea who they are but, presumably, there should be documentary evidence of anyone who served the Crown in Afghanistan, or for that matter in any other country, or who we trained. We would have their names and details, so surely this problem could be solved easily.

I want to pick up on two other points. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, I know Rwanda and I imagine a few people have been there—I think the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, is going there shortly. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I have made common cause on many issues around Africa for a long time. In a region of volatility, Rwanda is a beacon of stability. Would I have chosen Rwanda myself? Not necessarily. There has been a lot of criticism of Rwanda in this Chamber, but since His Excellency Paul Kagame, whom I know very well, took over as president, progress has been made around financial services, tourism and health. Human Rights Watch recently praised Rwanda for the abolition of the death penalty and the use of torture. Transparency International marked Rwanda five out of 47 in terms of corruption indicators. That country has joined the Commonwealth. If you visit Rwanda, you will see the extraordinary progress that it has made. It has signed a treaty that President Kagame has committed himself personally to uphold.

The noble Lord referred to Human Rights Watch. I assume that he has read its report on 2022, which stated of Rwanda:

“Arbitrary detention and ill-treatment in unofficial detention facilities were common”.

That may not fit with financial services thriving, but it does not point to a safe country.

I share the noble Baroness’s concerns about Rwanda because there are many areas about which we can be highly critical, but if we listened to some of the criticism of Rwanda as a country not only in this Chamber but in the media and elsewhere, we would conclude that it was incredibly backward and dangerous, which it manifestly is not.

On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made about Rwandan refugees specifically, Clause 4(1) states—the Minister can probably cover this:

“Section 2 does not prevent … the Secretary of State or an immigration officer from deciding … whether … Rwanda is a safe country”.

I humbly suggest that if there were a Rwandan asylum seeker here claiming asylum, they would be covered by that part of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to reply to those three points.

I would not want the noble Lord to proceed on the basis of believing that the JCHR, for instance, which I have been privileged to serve on, was critical of Rwanda. It is very much my view, too, that there has been progress made in Rwanda. What I was talking about before was the volatility within the region and how that can impact. Things changed dramatically in Rwanda, of course, leading to 800,000 people dying in the genocide there.

I draw the noble Lord’s attention to what the committee said on page 13. Talking about the Supreme Court, it said:

“Significantly, the Court did not hold that this was due to a lack of good faith on the part of Rwanda but rather ‘its practical ability to fulfil its assurances, at least in the short term, in the light of the present deficiencies of the Rwandan asylum system, the past and continuing practice of refoulement … and the scale of the changes in procedure, understanding and culture which are required’”.

Does the noble Lord agree?

I respect enormously what the noble Lord says. I would just push back slightly. The RPF and Kagame have a huge amount of support. They are running a very strong Government and when that Government sign treaties such as this one, I am confident that they will do their best to uphold their terms. I look forward to carrying on and making concords with the noble Lord, and to what the Minister will say in a moment.

My Lords, the power of this debate has been absolutely extraordinary. I think the House very much admires the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom—the Minister—who looks to me like a man alone today. I very much hope that he will be able to produce something.

I support all the amendments. Listening to the debate, I was struck by one exchange which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, started and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, followed up. I have wondered why the Government had drafted the Bill in the way that they have. By that, I have in mind its extraordinary beginning, which says:

“The purpose of this Act is to … deter unlawful migration”.

The next subsection begins “To advance that purpose—”, and then the Bill sets out the fact that this agreement has been entered into. This is obviously not there for political reasons only. It must be there to send a message to the courts that have to construe it. I am assuming—I very much hope that the Minister will confirm this—that it is in there not for political but for legal purposes. It is to send the message to the courts as to what the purpose and framework of the Bill is.

If that is right, I assume that what the courts are supposed to do is to construe this very unusual Bill in the context of its purpose. The courts are being asked, very unusually, to exclude the courts from determining whether Rwanda is a safe country. They are being asked to do that to deter illegal immigration. The exchange between the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Deben, underlined completely that there are certain categories of people where deterrence never comes into it—for example, the person who is being trafficked or the modern slave.

Presumably, having put all this material into the Bill, the Government intend that the courts should construe it in accordance with its purpose, giving an appropriately targeted meaning to these exclusions of court intervention. If it is absolutely apparent for an individual that deterrence could not possibly be given effect to by the Bill or its terms, obviously its unusual terms do not apply. Can the Minister confirm that the purpose of all these strange provisions—I have in mind Clause 1—is so that the courts have a very clear steer as to what the purpose is, and that they will construe the Bill in accordance with that purpose?

My Lords, Mary is 19; she is in Gezira, in Sudan, just by the Ethiopian border. She has been offered employment as domestic staff in Dubai and her passport is taken away for the journey. The employment agency that recruited her from the refugee camp—because she is displaced, like many hundreds of thousands in Gezira—have also taken a record of her family and where they are from, including her grandparents, who are in Darfur. En route to Dubai, she is told that she will no longer work in domestic staff with a named family; she is now going to be in hospitality, and she is quite excited about this. However, on the way, she is rerouted to Europe because her agency said that the hospitality company and the family are no longer able to accommodate her, so she has an alternative job. She will now be going to Birmingham in the UK. This is an extremely long journey for her; she has no choice, of course, because she does not have any papers or a passport. Now that she is in a situation where she is really concerned about how she is getting to Birmingham and for her own safety, she is reminded that those who arranged the travel—originally to Dubai, remember—know where her family are. When she arrives, it is not hospitality in Birmingham—it is prostitution.

This Bill, and the Illegal Migration Act, will mean that she is detained in the UK, not referred to any support, and will be sent to a different country. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, thinks that the Bill will deter her from believing the company who recruited her to Dubai, and she will be deterred from coming to Birmingham. The nonsensity of it is quite hard to credit. We have the national referral mechanism for a purpose, which is to ensure that Mary does not become a double victim, but that is no longer an option for Mary. She is just an example, but it is not a theoretical one, and if noble Lords do not believe me, they should believe the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and the excellent work he does, and I hope the Minister was listening careful to his contribution.

According to the latest Home Office data on the arrival on small boats, between 1 January 2018 and 30 June 2023 some 9% were in this category; that is 7,923 people who were referred to the NRM. They are not all Marys; there are many other circumstances, but they follow a very similar trajectory of being lied to, trafficked and blackmailed. The Illegal Migration Act adds an extra sinister element to this blackmail, because Mary would be able to stay in the UK only if she is actively part of the prosecution of the gang in Gezira on the Ethiopian border, which is an impossibility.

The legislation put forward by the Government in the Illegal Migration Act will also no longer be able to be open to Mary. I asked the Minister at Second Reading how the Illegal Migration Act will continue to protect the victims of trafficking—an assertion he made—and he said he would write to me; I have not yet received that letter, so I hope he will be very clear today as to how these people will be protected. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in his powerful contribution, according to Home Office information,

“the majority (78%) of reasonable grounds decisions for small boat arrivals since 2018 have been positive. Of the 780 conclusive grounds decisions issued, 78% were positive”.

These are not people who are gaming a system or, as the noble Lord, Lord Horam said, illegal asylum seekers: they are victims of a heinous crime, many of whom had no idea they would end up as part of a prostitution racket in England.

On Monday, I pressed the Advocate-General on the Government’s official position on whether Rwanda currently has the safeguards in place for those who would be relocated. I remind the Committee that I asked:

“If the Rwandan Government are ‘working towards’ putting safeguards in place, that means they are not currently in place. Is that correct?”

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, replied, “It must do”. So the Government have said that Rwanda is not safe yet and I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, that this is not us saying that Rwanda is not safe yet—the Minister said that it is

“working towards having the safeguards in place”.—[Official Report, 12/2/24; cols. 64-65.]

My Lords, in this Bill we are discussing many of the same issues we discussed during the passage of the Illegal Migration Bill. Given the importance of the issues that were raised and the strength of the arguments, it is unfortunate that we are here, not even a year later, asking the Government to ensure protections for vulnerable people, children, those trafficked or sold into slavery and those who have proven themselves friends and allies of our country in Afghanistan in the face of great personal danger. It is disappointing that the Government did not listen on that previous occasion and I hope the Minister has listened to the arguments put forward by noble Lords in Committee today and will respond fully to those concerns.

As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, said, this has essentially been a debate about exceptions. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, introduced her amendments about exceptions for those who may be victims under the Modern Slavery Act and, as she pointed out, there is a process to go through to make those sorts of assessments. She talked about, first, the referral, then the reasonable grounds submission and the final positive grounds submission. As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, the whole purpose of that Act, an Act which the whole of Parliament is proud of, introduced in 2017, is to stop double victims, and that is one category of people who, we argue, through the amendments, should be exempt from the provisions of the Bill.

My noble friend Lord Browne, in his Amendment 75, gave particular focus to this when he gave those open-source examples of three Afghans who arrived irregularly here on UK shores and who face deportation to Rwanda. His amendments seek to make an exception for those cases as well. I have to say that I think my noble friend’s amendment should be very difficult for the Back Benches of the party opposite to resist. I thought the contribution from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, was particularly supportive when he said that the number one objective is to be seen as a trustworthy country.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Horam, because he was the noble Lord who most clearly articulated the purpose of the Bill as drafted. He said that there needs to be a sharpness and narrowness of definition to achieve the ends and facilitate the removals of people to Rwanda. That was a very clear statement of what is indeed the object of the Bill, but we are talking here about exceptions, about people who may be victims of modern slavery or may have served our country in Afghanistan or elsewhere. The power of the debate is where the moral authority lies. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, made an interesting point. Of course, he is a loyal member of his own party, but he urged the Minister to look for alternative ways to achieve the same ends, and I will listen very carefully to what the Minister has to say to that challenge.

I conclude by saying that this has been an extraordinary debate. It goes to the very heart of what our country stands for. It is about integrity, about moral authority and about the rule of law and how our rule of law is viewed by other countries, which are probably watching our debate as we are having it right now. It is in that spirit that I will listen very carefully to the answer of the Minister.

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this very thoughtful debate. I reassure noble Lords that my noble and learned friend and I have paid very close attention to all the points that have been made.

As we have heard, these amendments relate to the position of potential and confirmed victims of modern slavery, and exempting people from being relocated to Rwanda, including those who have supported His Majesty’s Armed Forces or the UK Government overseas in certain circumstances.

Of course, we greatly value the contribution of those who have supported us and our Armed Forces overseas, and we have accepted our moral obligation. That is why there are legal routes for them to come to the UK. For example, all those who enlist and serve in His Majesty’s Armed Forces are exempt from immigration control until they are discharged from regular service. After that, non-UK HM Armed Forces personnel can apply for settlement under the Immigration Rules on discharge, when their exemption from immigration control ends. There are also provisions for family members of HM Armed Forces personnel to come to the UK legally. Anyone eligible for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and Afghan citizens resettlement scheme should apply to come to the UK legally under those routes. As regards the specific case of British Council personnel, they are qualified under the third pathway of the ACRS and places are offered to them. To correct the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, these are not Home Office-run programmes, they are run by the MoD and the Foreign Office.

I have no doubt that, with regard to Amendment 75, the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, would agree with me that we need to deter people from making dangerous and unnecessary journeys to the UK. A person who arrives in the UK illegally should not be able to make the UK their home and eventually settle here. Regardless of the contribution they have previously made, a person who chooses to come to the UK illegally, particularly if they have a safe and legal route available to them, should be liable for removal to a safe country. Having said that, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, know that service- men are a subject of considerable personal importance to me. If they have any particular instances of personnel struggling to access one of those safe and legal routes, I ask them to raise them with me directly.

I feel I have to point out to the Minister facts which I took for granted, because they had instructed the Government’s apparent U-turn on the ARAP scheme to review those who had been told they were ineligible for it. That implies that the Government accept the overwhelming evidence that these decisions were made in error on our relationship to people who were otherwise members of the Afghan forces and not our forces, and therefore not able to avail themselves of the provisions that the Minister has described—unnecessarily, I think—to the Committee. It is not those people we are talking about.

We have a group of people who were refused because errors were made. They may also have been refused, in some cases, because there was a deliberate, venal reason by other forces to block them from that arrangement. I do not want to debate that issue; I do not know the facts of it, it is subject to an investigation, and we should not trouble ourselves with it. However, that may be the case.

It comes to this: many of these people applied for the status that would allow them a legal way to come. They were refused—in error, deliberately, or maliciously. The review will tell us that. They were then faced with the choice to stay in Afghanistan and face certain death or to get here somehow. They chose to get here somehow; they had no alternative. There was no legal route open to them. That is the dilemma. It is not that they chose not to “hop on” a British Airways flight and come here, showing their status to allow them to do it. It was taken from them wrongly and they were left in this situation. They had the choice of waiting for their death or getting here. These are not people doing something because they want to—they have no alternative.

I take the noble Lord’s point, and I deeply regret any errors that were made in regard to these personnel. I certainly hope that the investigations are rigorous, and if there is any suggestion of any malicious refusal, the full force of the law should be brought to bear. Those errors have been identified, partly because of the noble Lord’s campaigning, and I am assured that they have been corrected now. Therefore, the point stands: there are safe and legal routes to this country for personnel in these positions.

I will reinforce the point that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, has made and I am grateful to the Minister for his patience. The individual cases that I have referred to the Minister have failed to qualify under the ARAP scheme, and yet he, through his own interventions and those of other Ministers, has been able to rectify those issues; there will doubtless be similar cases in the future as well. Should we not at least have a review of how the schemes are running—an open and transparent process—and a review of some of the cases that have already been referred to the Minister, and to the MoD and the Foreign Office, so that we can see how many we are talking about and what is going wrong inside the system that those cases were turned down in the first place?

My Lords, I am not sure whether I picked up in the Minister’s response that he included the cohort listed in paragraph (b) of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Browne; that is, not people who have supported our Armed Forces overseas but

“persons who have been employed by or indirectly contracted to provide services to the United Kingdom Government”.

Regarding the applications to the ARAP scheme, clearly, I am not qualified to comment on individual circumstances as described by the noble Lord. I am afraid I do not know the precise details of who is qualified to apply under the ARAP scheme, so I will find that out and come back to the noble Baroness in due course. I cannot give any further comment at this point.

I have heard what has been said, and I will now turn to Amendments 70, 73 and 85, proposed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and Amendments 18, 23, and 47, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord German. The UK has a proactive duty to identify victims of modern slavery, and we remain committed to ensuring that where indicators that someone is a victim of modern slavery are identified by first responders, they continue to be referred into the national referral mechanism for consideration by the competent authorities. Steps will be taken in all cases to identify whether a person may be a victim of modern slavery, and if a person is referred into the national referral mechanism, a reasonable grounds decision will be made.

Amendment 70 would act to impede the provisions already passed in the Nationality and Borders Act and the Illegal Migration Act that introduced the means to disqualify certain individuals from the national referral mechanism on grounds of public order before a conclusive grounds decision is considered. The amendment is also unnecessary—it is important to be clear on this point—as the Government of Rwanda have systems in place to safeguard relocated individuals with a range of vulnerabilities, including those concerning mental health and gender-based violence.

Regarding victims of modern slavery, Article 5(2)(d) of the treaty obliges the UK to provide Rwanda with

“the outcome of any decision in the United Kingdom as to whether the Relocated Individual is a victim of trafficking”,

and this includes positive reasonable grounds decisions, as well as positive conclusive grounds decisions. Article 13 of the treaty makes specific provision that Rwanda will have regard to information provided by the UK

“about a Relocated Individual relating to any special needs that may arise as a result of them being a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, and shall take all necessary steps to ensure that these needs are accommodated”.

This is the point I made at Second Reading. Section 22 of the Illegal Migration Act disapplies all of what the Minister just said when someone arrives by an irregular route. It disapplies the process of someone claiming that they are a victim of trafficking; it disapplies their ability to be referred to the NRM; and it disapplies the Home Office or the receiving officer taking this information. How are they interacting?

My Lords, I will repeat the point: the first responders will be expected to refer individuals into the NRM where there are indicators of modern slavery. One of those indicators is whether they claim to be victims of modern slavery.

I am still waiting on the letter. Section 22 of the Illegal Migration Act, on modern slavery, disapplies that. It is not possible for that to happen under the Illegal Migration Act.

I repeat the points that I have made. I will write the letter to the noble Lord. I have the information, but it is incredibly lengthy and I do not want to repeat it all now. I will make sure it is put down in a letter to the noble Lord.

The Minister cannot get away with this. This is a clear issue of an amendment that has been put specifically regarding these people. Section 22(2) disapplies the prohibition of removing that person. Basically, the Illegal Migration Act does exactly what my noble friend says: these people will not be referred. The answer that the Minister has given from the Dispatch Box does not apply to people who have arrived by an illegal route. What route will they have to be assured that any protection that he has just said will be offered to them in Rwanda will in fact be offered there? There will be no data, no evidence and no protection for them.

My Lords, I will go into the detail that I have on what happens when someone arrives illegally and claims to be a victim of modern slavery, both under the Illegal Migration Act and pre-IMA. First responders will be expected to refer individuals into the national referral mechanism where there are indicators of modern slavery, whether IMA or pre-IMA.

Under the IMA, when somebody has arrived in the UK illegally and is therefore subject to the Section 2 duty to make removal arrangements, and has received a positive modern slavery reasonable grounds decision from the competent authorities in the NRM, they will be disqualified from the protections that typically flow from a positive RG decision unless the exceptions in Section 22 of the IMA apply.

Under pre-IMA, when someone has arrived in the UK illegally and they have received a positive modern slavery reasonable grounds decision in the NRM, they are eligible for the protections and support of the recovery period. However, if a public order disqualification, as set out in Section 63 of NABA, is made for an individual, that eligibility for support will not apply and they may be eligible for removal.

The other point is that, as I have said before from the Dispatch Box, the treaty specifically provides that we share information with Rwanda and that extra measures will be provided with regards to the specific vulnerabilities of the types that we are discussing. I hope that goes some way to clarify the picture. I appreciate that it is quite complex to keep up with, and I will write a letter.

Amendments 23 and 47 overlap with later amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord German, will be content if I deal with the substance of that amendment when we reach that debate. In summary, Article 3 of the UK-Rwanda treaty makes specific reference to unaccompanied children not being included in the treaty and that the UK Government will not seek to relocate unaccompanied children under the age of 18 to Rwanda.

Amendment 85 looks to put a block on commencement and seeks to ensure that there are detailed assessments of the impact of the Bill on victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. The independent monitoring committee, established on 2 September 2022 under the terms of the initial MoU, has subsequently been enhanced by the treaty between the UK and Rwanda to ensure that the obligations under the treaty are adhered to in practice. The treaty already makes clear that the agreed monitoring mechanisms must be in place by the time the partnership is operationalised.

As noble Lords also know, the new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner started her role on 11 December 2023. The Government will work collaboratively with the commissioner to ensure that modern slavery is effectively tackled in the UK, and will work with international partners to promote best practice.

As set out in the earlier debate, the Government’s assessment in the published policy statement, drawing on wider evidence documents, is that Rwanda is a safe country with respect for the rule of law. The treaty that the UK has agreed with Rwanda makes express provision for the treatment of relocated individuals, demonstrating the commitment of both parties to upholding fundamental human rights and freedoms without discrimination and in line with both our domestic and our international obligations.

Rwanda is a country that cares deeply about refugees, and I thank my noble friend Lord Bellingham for his perspective on this. That is demonstrated by its work with the UNHCR to temporarily accommodate some of the most vulnerable populations who have faced trauma, detention and violence. We are confident that those relocated under our partnership would be safe, as per the assurances negotiated in our legally binding treaty.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Clause 7(2) of the Bill says:

“In this Act, references to a person do not include a person who is a national of the Republic of Rwanda or who has obtained a passport or other document of identity in the Republic of Rwanda”.

All relocated individuals, including potential and confirmed victims of modern slavery, will receive appropriate protections and assistance according to their needs, including referral to specialist services, as appropriate, to protect their welfare.

Morality was mentioned by a number of speakers. I would like to put on the record a slightly different perspective on morality. I think it is immoral not to try to stop vulnerable people being exposed to dangerous and involuntary channel crossings. It is immoral to facilitate the activity of criminal gangs, most of whom, by definition, are also human traffickers. It is our moral imperative to stop these modern-day slavers and smash these criminal gangs that are exploiting people and putting others’ lives at risk. If any victims are identified, as I have repeatedly said, there are safeguards within the treaty to make provision for their vulnerabilities.

On that point, those of us who raised the question about morality agree with all the Minister said about it but, at this moment, we are clearly uncertain about whether people who have been trafficked are able to get support in this country, from a system that was laid down by a Conservative Prime Minister, before there is any question of them being exported to Rwanda. If the Minister can show that to us in the letter, which I hope he copies to me and to others, we will be prepared to accept that we are being moral, at least in that category. At the moment, it looks to us as if we are not dealing with the issue of people who could not be deterred from coming here because they are being brought here compulsorily.

I thank my noble friend for that and will of course make sure that he is copied in to the letter. I heard very clearly what he said, and I speak on behalf of my noble and learned friend. Clearly, we would not wish to argue for a lack of morality in the safeguards that we are putting in place for vulnerable people.

I have a specific question to ask. I do not doubt the Minister’s motives or morality; I think that doing this is just wrong. On 12 July—I checked the record—the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Murray, told the House when we were voting on the trafficking amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill that only British nationals could be referred to the NRM. The Minister needs to be very clear in confirming that any national who arrives on a small boat can now be referred to the NRM. That is the clarification that I am seeking from the Minister; it is a very simple question.

Based on the information that I have available to me here, the answer to that is yes. However, I reserve the right to correct that in the letter if I am wrong, for which obviously I will issue the appropriate apologies.

If, despite all those safeguards, an individual considers that Rwanda would not be safe for them, Clause 4 means that decision-makers may consider a claim on such grounds other than in relation to alleged onward refoulement if such a claim is based on compelling evidence relating specifically to the person’s particular individual circumstances rather than on the ground that Rwanda is not a safe country in general.

I hope that I have been able to provide some reassurance to noble Lords and that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for contributing to what has been a very powerful and at times deeply moving debate. It reminds us that we are talking not about a group with a label but about fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. In this group we have been talking about some of the most vulnerable of the vulnerable: those who have been trafficked, who have not arrived on our shores of free will but who are here because, as my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed said, they have been trafficked, have been brought here against their will and are being held in slavery against their will.

This debate has shown that when reality hits rhetoric, rhetoric never wins. I have not been convinced by the Minister’s responses, and in a way I feel sorry for him, because I am sure that, in his heart of hearts, he does not believe in the majority of the nonsense that comes out of his official briefs on this. It is so incredible that it could be read in a parallel universe, because it is not based in the reality which I think most sensible people in this country would understand.

It is amazing that we as a House of the British Parliament, to use the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, now have to plead in order to try to put in a league table the right of the most vulnerable of the vulnerable for some basic protections that we would want to give every single human being. I do not think that the Minister has convinced me or the majority of the House that the answers he has given do that.

However, despite that, I am sure that on Report we will come back to these important issues of protecting mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. I beg to withdraw Amendment 18.

My Lords, I rise in place of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to speak to Amendments 19, 21, 25 and 28, in his name and in mine, which are also signed variously by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. We are all grateful to Justice for its assistance in drafting these simple but important amendments.

The purpose of these amendments is to replace the irrebuttable presumption in Clause 2 that Rwanda is a safe country by a rebuttable presumption to the same effect. Decision-makers would begin from the same position that Rwanda is safe, but they would be entitled to consider credible evidence to the contrary. That is provided by Amendments 19 and 21, which amend Clause 2(1).

Amendment 28 supplies more detail by indicating the matters on which evidence could, if it is available, be presented: the risk of refoulement from Rwanda, the risk that there will be no fair and proper consideration of an asylum claim there, and the risk that Rwanda will not act in accordance with the treaty. These are all things that, under Clause 2 as it currently stands, may not be considered by independent courts and tribunals. They are not only relevant but of the highest importance to the lives and safety of anyone we send to Rwanda.

Finally, Amendment 25 would lift the bar on courts and tribunals considering claims that Rwanda is not safe. It is the logical corollary of Amendments 19 and 21: if decision-makers are entitled to consider credible evidence that Rwanda is not safe, the courts must be entitled to do so in order to determine whether they came to a lawful decision. Amendment 29, from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is welcome, but without an equivalent of Amendment 25 I am afraid that it does not do the job.

These amendments would not open the floodgates to vexatious claims. To be considered, any evidence must meet the credibility threshold—a well-established feature of Home Office practice, which, in a policy document entitled Assessing Credibility and Refugee Status in Asylum Claims Lodged on or After 28 June 2022, highlights a number of so-called credibility factors, including sufficiency of detail, internal consistency and plausibility.

To summarise, Clause 2, as it came to us from the Commons, requires officials to disregard relevant facts and prevents the courts calling them to account for it. With Clause 1, it creates a legal fiction—not in the field of tax law or planning law, where such things have their place, but in the totally different context of human safety and its opposite. It suppresses the evidence-based inquiry on which our common law and, ultimately, our democracy depend. Accept this and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said in his Second Reading speech, with all his constitutional expertise:

“We shall be living in a different land, breathing different air in a significantly diminished kingdom”.—[Official Report, 29/1/24; col. 1022.]

These four amendments would enable those entrusted with these sensitive decisions to look at Rwanda as it is, not as we all hope that it may become. But I must acknowledge that, for this very reason, they go to the heart of this Bill, for it is not a by-product of this Bill but its whole purpose to assert to be true what first the Supreme Court and then our International Agreements Committee have found to be false, and then to protect that false assertion from rational challenge by decision-makers or in the courts.

This is not, like the previous group, a debate about exceptions. The deterrence theory on which the Bill is founded has the unfortunate result that it is the most objectionable features of this Bill to which the Government hold most tightly, even when, as here, they set a thoroughly depressing precedent. There are limits to my optimism that the Minister will respond positively to these amendments but, knowing him and respecting him as I do, I do not altogether abandon hope.

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who has put his case with the precision and succinctness that we remember of our late friend Lord Judge. These amendments would render the safety of Rwanda, which we hope will come in the future, a rebuttable presumption rather than an absolute conclusion. They echo my Amendment 34, which we discussed in the first group, but put more flesh on those bones. I commend them to the Committee.

I also remind the Committee that the amendments echo a finding by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. Ministers say that it is precedented and normal to have lists of safe countries in asylum statutes. That has been the case in the past, but in those past cases the consequence of being a safe country on a so-called and unfortunately coined white list of countries has been only a rebuttable presumption. So Ministers were wrong, for example, to say during the course of the Illegal Migration Act, “Nothing special here, nothing new”, when they said that it will be an absolute conclusion and irrebuttable presumption that any country is absolutely safe.

We need to amend this Bill in good faith. We need belts and braces. We will have to look at other provisions and amendments around how it is that we will judge when Rwanda becomes safe, as we all want it to be. In any event, even when all the experts in the world—the UNHCR, independent monitors, parliamentary committees —say that things have gone well in the last couple of years and that the treaty worked out, and how wrong we were to be so sceptical as things have gone so well, so quickly, and Rwanda is considered to be one of the safest countries in the world for its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, it is still right in principle that the presumption of safety should be a rebuttable presumption and not an absolute conclusion that squeezes out the judgment of civil servants, Border Force and Ministers, or ousts the jurisdiction of our courts.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 30 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Cashman and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza. I am grateful to them for their support and to Redress and RAMP for their help, and I refer here to my interests in the register.

This amendment would mean that Clause 2(1) and related subsections concerning the treatment of Rwanda as a safe country would not apply where

“torture … has taken place in Rwanda in the two years prior”,

or where the person concerned

“is themselves a survivor of torture”.

As such, it seeks to minimise the risk of torture arising from the Bill and to safeguard those who are survivors of torture.

The prohibition of torture is guaranteed by the UK through its ratification of various international and regional human rights instruments, particularly the 1984 UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. As a JCHR report on the Bill explains, UNCAT

“provides that a person cannot be removed to a State where there are substantial grounds for believing they would be in danger of being subjected to torture”.

The JCHR emphasis that this is

“a core principle of international law, to which the UK has committed itself on numerous occasions over the past 70 years”.

The existential significance of torture is underlined by a former UN special rapporteur on torture and professor of law, Juan E Méndez, who is himself a torture survivor. He says:

“Torture aims to dehumanise survivors through calculated acts of cruelty to remove the survivors’ dignity and make them powerless. It is a very serious human rights violation and an international crime. It is also a crime under UK national law, no matter where the torture was committed. Torture is forbidden under all circumstances and can never be justified”.

He is saying that this prohibition on torture is absolute and non-derogable, meaning that it cannot be suspended or restricted in any circumstances. This prohibition includes a ban on sending someone to a country where they are at risk of torture or where there is a possibility that they will be sent on to another third country where such a risk may exist. The amendment simply attempts to ensure that the first of these does not happen, while protecting those who have already been subjected to torture.

My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton referred to the issue of torture in the context of refoulement on Monday. However, this amendment concerns torture in Rwanda itself. Redress asked me to table this amendment because of consistent reports of torture being used in Rwanda by the military and the police. According to Human Rights Watch’s submission to the International Agreements Committee, serious human rights abuses continue to occur in Rwanda, including repression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture by Rwandan authorities.

My Lords, I too have added my name to this amendment, and I declare an interest as a patron of Redress, the anti-torture organisation. A recent Westminster Foundation for Democracy report pointed out the common pitfalls that democratic Governments fall into when dealing with authoritarian regimes, one of which is to promote their economic and other development at the expense of acknowledging less desirable characteristics. Rwanda would seem to be a classic case of this pitfall.

As we have heard at length and in detail from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the human rights record of Rwanda is not good, to say the least. Torture, among other crimes against humanity, continues to be carried out. This amendment is therefore essential. I remind your Lordships of the case of Victoire Ingabire, who is the only opposition parliamentarian in Rwanda and has spent eight years in jail, some of them in solitary confinement. It would be useful to ask her what her views are on torture and other crimes against humanity in Rwanda at the moment, in both formal and informal sectors.

We have enough evidence to suggest that this amendment must be included in the Bill if we are to ensure freedom from torture for those whom we send to Rwanda.

My Lords, I support these amendments, which seem to me to go to the heart of the most extraordinary feature of this Bill. It is essentially intended to reverse a legal defeat the Government suffered in the British Supreme Court on a matter of law. Five Supreme Court judges listened to the evidence and decided as a matter of fact that Rwanda is not, at the moment, a safe country for the purposes we are discussing.

The Government have reacted to that judgment in a way no other disappointed litigant could possibly have contemplated. They have decided to invoke the sovereignty of Parliament and to ask both Houses to pass legislation that declares that the facts are indeed contrary to those which the Supreme Court declared to be the factual situation. The facts are to be regarded as the facts the Government state for the indefinite future, whatever happens from now on, unless or until this legislation is amended or repealed—if it ever is. I spoke at Second Reading, so I will not repeat all the arguments I made then, but I continue to be completely flabbergasted by the constitutional implications of the Government acting in this way.

Has the Minister been able to find any precedent for this occurring? Have any Government in a similar situation ever decided to reverse any legal defeat by just passing legislation saying, “The facts are what we say they are, not the facts the Supreme Court has found on the evidence”? I think it unlikely. For that reason, it is an extremely dangerous precedent. For that reason, I very much hope that there will be a legal challenge that will enable the Supreme Court to strike it down as unconstitutional in due course. But the better step would be for Parliament not to pass the legislation in the first place.

Finally, the most striking feature is that the legislation declares the facts to be the facts from now on, so long as it remains on the statute book, regardless of future events. Let us say that a situation arises which I very much hope does not, given that the Rwandan Government are one of the more attractive, by comparison, of African Governments. But say a coup were to occur in Rwanda and the present, fairly benign dictator were to be replaced by a much more malign dictator. What the Government are asking us to declare is that the courts can be told that Rwanda remains a safe country and they are not to entertain credible evidence that events in Rwanda have occurred which change that situation. It is being laid down as a matter of law for the indefinite future, regardless of whatever startling further facts might emerge which someone might put before a court. I find that completely preposterous. I very much hope that we would never elect a British Government who would be so outrageous as to proceed in those circumstances, but that is the legal position this House is being asked to endorse.

I find it incredible that anyone can really expect a British Parliament, in 2024, to pass legislation of this kind. I ask the Minister to reconsider and to let us know whether the rule of law, the admission of evidence and the consideration of that evidence by British judges might be allowed to function in its normal way, and whether the Government are prepared to reconsider at least the wording and the detail, particularly of Clause 2 of the Bill they have put before us.

My Lords, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Manchester regrets that he cannot be here today to speak to Amendments 19, 21, 25 and 28 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, to which he has added his name. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, for setting out the case clearly, and I am particularly grateful to follow the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, as he has made the case so powerfully.

My right reverend friend and I are concerned, not as lawyers but as citizens, about the constitutional precedent the Bill sets. The role of the judiciary as distinct from the Government and Parliament must not be infringed. Parliament creates laws but judges and juries are responsible for the finding of facts. Where the Supreme Court has ruled that Rwanda is not safe, it is an abuse of Parliament’s powers, as we have just heard, for it to attempt to declare otherwise. We are concerned that the Bill represents a dangerous step. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, therefore attempt to preserve the important principle that facts should be considered by the courts. We must surely be able to take into account credible evidence that Rwanda is not a safe country.

It is not unreasonable to consider, as we have just heard, that the situation on the ground in Rwanda might suddenly change, even if the treaty is properly put into effect to take into account the Supreme Court’s concerns. It is surely right that such a change could be considered in law. Not only is this a vital safeguard for potentially vulnerable people at risk of being sent to Rwanda; it is a vital safeguard for our democracy itself. We must be able to take credible evidence into account when managing any policy, be it on Rwanda or anything else, and we must not be in the habit of setting aside court verdicts we do not like by bringing forward legislation.

My right reverend friend the Bishop of Manchester has also added his name to the proposition put forward by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that Clause 2 should not stand part of the Bill. Removing this clause would remove the requirement that all decision-makers must treat Rwanda as a safe country. The amendments to which I have already spoken try to mitigate the implications of legislating that a country is safe ad infinitum, but in truth the courts, immigration officers and tribunals need the capacity to consider the facts about whether Rwanda is a safe country in general. Removing the clause altogether is the best way to do this and to maintain independent judicial oversight. My right reverend friend and I agree that this principle is fundamental to the rule of law and access to justice.

My Lords, every time in this Committee you think that the Government cannot be more flattened than they were in the previous debate, they are even more flattened. I refer to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who in my respectful submission completely flattened the Government’s case for not allowing the courts in.

I support what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is proposing. As the Committee understands, it means that if somebody challenges whether Rwanda is a safe country in general, the courts must decide on it. The Government are obviously under no illusions about what such a clause would mean. It would not mean that an asylum seeker, every time they were in trouble and might be about to be expelled, could raise the question generally of whether Rwanda is a safe country; it would mean in practice that, eventually, one case in a high Court of Appeal would definitively decide whether at that time Rwanda was a safe country in general or not.

The practical consequence of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is that the courts will determine once—and maybe again in a few years’ time if the position has changed—whether it is a safe country in general, and everyone else will be bound by that. The Government accept that, if the issue is whether an individual’s circumstances put him or her at risk, they have the right to challenge in court anyway. By refusing to allow this to happen, they are cutting out a one-off shot by the courts to determine whether Rwanda is a safe country in general.

Why on earth would they not want that to happen, as their case is not that Rwanda might or might not be a safe country but that it is a safe country? Might I venture to suggest a reason why they are behaving in this extraordinary way? It is because it will take a bit of time for the courts to reach that conclusion—maybe two or three months from the Bill becoming law—and in that time there might be a general election and nobody will have flown to Rwanda. Could a responsible Government be willing to put asylum seekers’ lives at risk on the chance that Rwanda might not be a safe country? Obviously not, without a proper examination by the courts.

What I am saying does not challenge the basic policy of deporting to a third safe country or offshore processing—that debate is for another day—but, if the Government are going to do this, to give people confidence in them and to give the world confidence in the UK, surely they should do it lawfully, not unlawfully. They should not be advancing bogus reasons for cutting out the courts, when the courts are there in every other consideration of whether a country is safe. It is very discreditable.

My Lords, I hope the Committee accepts that I rarely intervene when the lawyers are at it, because I am not of great assistance, particularly to my noble friend of a great many years Lord Clarke. But he asked the Government to tell him of an occasion when this has happened before. I will remind him of one: the court of King Canute told him that, because he was sovereign, he could tell the waters to stop and the tide to go out. Of course, we were never taught it this way round in school, but the truth is that King Canute went to prove to his courtiers that he could not reverse the truth.

The problem with this part of the Bill is that it proposes that the sovereignty of Parliament is able to make a situation true, whether it is or not. In other words, this would be wrong even if the Supreme Court had not ruled that this is not a safe country. It is not part of the sovereignty of Parliament to declare truth; it is part of the sovereignty of Parliament to declare the law—and, in so far as we are sensible, we try to make the law as close to the truth as possible.

Now this Government have done a remarkable thing. There are many bishops on the Bench at the moment, so I will speak with a certain amount of care, but I seem to remember:

“‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer”.

This Government have not even asked the first question. They assert that this is true and, as my noble friend suggested, not only is it true but it will always be true until, I suppose, the Government—because the courts will have no place in this—say that it is not true.

The reason I feel so strongly about this is that I have spent nearly 11 years of my life as chairman of the Climate Change Committee. One of the problems I have faced all that time is people asserting “my truth” —not “the” truth but “my” truth—and that their truth is the equal of anyone else’s truth. That is not the nature of truth. Truth has constantly to be questioned. Doubt is an essential part of faith; you have constantly to question. The Government are proposing a unique situation, which is that we shall never question their decision, at this moment, that Rwanda is a safe place. I am not going to try to say whether I think it is safe or not. I think merely that it should be under constant consideration if we are going to take other human beings out of our jurisdiction and place them somewhere else.

That, if I may say so to my noble friend, is a moral matter. We remove responsibility by doing this, and the one way in which we can protect ourselves is if the place to which we send them is constantly available for questioning. The only place where that questioning can take place is in a court because courts listen to all the arguments, hear all the evidence and make a decision. If you do not like the decision, you can appeal it, but finally you have to accept it. Once you undermine that, I do not see how you can uphold the rule of law anywhere else. Once the Government have said that their truth is true and there is no other truth, we have moved into a position which is entirely unacceptable in a democracy. This Government have to understand that—on this issue perhaps alone—this House will have to stop this Government’s proposal by whatever way. This is our duty. We are not a House which just puts the details of law into some sense. We also have a constitutional position. The Prime Minister made his rather curious statement about the will of the people, but the will of the people can be protected only if this House stands up for the constitution of our nation, and our constitutional position must be that the Government cannot determine truth. Only the courts can do that.

My Lords, I will be very brief. I endorse the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I want to question slightly the use of truth because there is a difference between truth and factuality. Something can be not factual, but it can be true. Let us look at a parable, for example. We have not even got as far as factuality when we are talking about truth. To put it very simply—I am in terrible danger of evoking Immanuel Kant here, but I will try to avoid that—if I say I am a banana, it does not make me a banana. There has to be some credible questioning of that. I am not a banana. A country does not become safe because someone says it is, even if a Government say that. That has to be demonstrated, and it has to be open to question, particularly, as has been said many times, because the word “is”—we are getting very Clintonesque in his impeachment hearings when we get into the meaning of “is”—has a permanence about it that does not allow for the possibility of change. I fail to see rationally how this is such a problem for the Government, other than that there is an ideological drive in this which is not open to argument.

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 22, 37 and 42 in the name of my noble friend Lord German, to which I have put my name. These are probing amendments to bring out the mistreatment of evidence that this Bill is enforcing. It is not just that the courts are being cut out but, in the very limited times that an individual can go to a court or tribunal, the truth also is being denied. The court cannot look at the truth in those individual cases.

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments in this group, which seem eminently sensible—that is probably why the Government will reject them. I also support particularly Amendment 30, to which I have added my name. I am not going to go over the points raised by my noble friend Lady Lister, who has outlined the reasons for the importance of this amendment extremely well.

There have been consistent reports of torture being used in Rwanda, by both the military and the police. The United Nations has concluded that Rwanda does not have in place the necessary safeguards against torture or the structures to respond to it. Recent reports also confirm that torture persists in Rwanda, along with continued risks of refoulement to third countries. It is clear in those reports that Rwanda does not have in place safeguards against torture, or an effective process for responding to the allegations of torture. There is a long list of cases and reports set out by the eminent organisation Redress, and I note them for the record in Hansard.

At the UN Human Rights Council universal periodic review of Rwanda in January 2021, as has been cited by my noble friend Lady Lister, the United Kingdom Government criticised Rwanda for

“extrajudicial killings, death in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.

I ask the Minister: what has been the miraculous turnaround in the past three years?

My Lords, I support the case put by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and ask about a current torture case concerning a journalist called Dieudonné Niyonsenga. Last month he appeared in a court in Kigali on appeal; he was sentenced three years ago to seven years in prison. He appeared in court with a wound in his head and he claimed, in that hearing, that he had been tortured. His case has been taken up by the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is not something theoretical or in the past; it is happening right now.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the expert contribution of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald. I offer Green support for all the amendments in this group. I particularly highlight and commend the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and her allies for highlighting something that is crucial, but I feel that has been covered powerfully, so I will simply address most of the other amendments in this group.

It is worth stressing that the amendments would remove the legal fiction that Rwanda must be treated conclusively as safe by the courts and other decision-makers. They would allow the consideration of evidence. I am speaking in the midst of many eminent lawyers, so I will focus on the politics of this. We live in a world in which we are often told we are living with post-truth politics. At the weekend, I was in the constituency of Kingswood knocking on doors. I met some people there who were living in a post-truth environment—people who had disappeared down some very dark conspiracy rabbit holes. When you are knocking on doors, of course it is impossible to attempt to extract people from those rabbit holes in the couple of minutes you have, but it is truly terrifying—I have to say that most of them will be voting for the Reform party on Thursday, which is something the Government should have great concern about for all kinds of reasons.

Post-truth politics is one thing, but what we confront with the Rwanda Bill is post-truth law. The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, said—I wrote down his words—that he was

“completely flabbergasted by the constitutional implications”.

What are the constitutional implications of post-truth law? Nothing is weighed on the reality of the world.

I want to pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about the duties of this House. Surely it is the duty of this House to ensure that we have truth- based law.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Clarke asked whether there was any precedent for the kind of legislation we are considering, in which some question of fact is declared to be the case to the exclusion of any contrary decision by a court. There are such precedents, but you have to go a long way back in our history to find them.

In 1531, there was an unfortunate incident at a dinner party given by the Bishop of Rochester. All the people who ate their dinner became sick, and one of them died. This was not, at the time, put down to the inadequacy of the health and safety laws in the 16th century, but suspicion fell upon the cook. The King had a horror of poisoning. He was more or less a contemporary of Lucrezia Borgia and recognised that it was being used as a political weapon all over the country. He came down to Parliament, to your Lordships’ House, and promoted a Bill that became an Act. It declared, first, that poisoning was a form of treason; secondly, that the penalty for it was to be boiled alive; and, thirdly—this is the point—that the cook had been guilty of this crime and no trial was to take place. They were probably concerned that some lefty lawyers might get the cook off if it went to trial. The result was that the cook was duly boiled alive before an appreciative audience at Smithfield. That is the sort of precedent which one has to look at in order to justify what is being done now.

Since then, for centuries, we have had the development of the principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers—principles which English constitutional lawyers have written about with pride and foreign lawyers have written about with admiration. I suggest to your Lordships that that is where we ought to stay.

My Lords, perhaps it is only the House of Lords that when asked to find a precedent can refer back to 1531. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman, that I was aware of that issue, because I have seen the Act. It was on display in the National Archives in its exhibition on treason last year. I think the Minister has also seen it. It was also noted that it was repealed quite shortly afterwards.

Once the cook was dead.

The Government are asking us to be the perpetual judge of the legislation and actions of another country. That puts the legislature in an unusual position. In fact, it puts it into a unique position, specifically for this country. I am not a judge on Rwandan legislation, policy or actions. I have been to Rwanda; I respect it greatly and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. I have been massively impressed with the development of Rwanda that is in their hands.

The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, referred to the eloquent points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lords, Lord McDonald and Lord Cashman, with regard to torture. She told us that if we wanted to be a judge, we should speak to Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader who is currently under house arrest. I have. I have been in her house, and I have asked her that question. Subsequent to my meeting the opposition member, officials of the Rwanda Government asked the hotel that I was staying at to inform on me. I am not a judge as to whether that means that Rwanda is a safe country. That is one example—I think, a bad example. It is probably an illustrative example. However, I am not a judge on that—our courts are. That is why we have them here.

We are asked not just to pass a “Rwanda is safe” Bill but to pass—

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I want to add to his experience that, the minute I had visited Victoire Ingabire, my phone was nicked.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The Minister might see two examples and ask when it becomes a pattern. Again, I am not a judge for it. As I was saying, we are not just asked to judge that Rwanda is a safe country under this legislation but we are asked to agree to legislation that states that Rwanda will never be unsafe. How on earth can we possibly do that?

On Monday, the Minister found it incredibly difficult to determine that Rwanda is currently safe. I remind the Committee of his response—because it is worth reminding the Committee, if not him. My noble friend Lady Hamwee asked whether there would be safeguards in place to make Rwanda safe. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, said:

“My Lords, it is a matter of working towards having the safeguards in place”.

I then asked:

“If the Rwandan Government are ‘working towards’ putting safeguards in place, that means they are not currently in place. Is that correct?”

The noble and learned Lord said:

“It must do”.

That is the Government saying that it is not currently safe. Why is that important for this group of amendments? It is important because I later asked the Minister to confirm that

“no relocation would take place until those safeguards would be in place”.

The noble and learned Lord replied:

“I can answer the first part of the noble Lord’s question in the affirmative”.—[Official Report, 12/2/24; cols. 64-70.]

We know that there will be no relocation until safeguards are in place that Rwanda will be a safe country. The Minister was unable to confirm when that would be the case. However, the Bill is asking us not only to jump ahead of that but to deny courts from ever considering whether Rwanda could be unsafe. It is still quite hard to work out the rationality of where we are.

My Lords, I will make a brief postscript to the very powerful interventions that have been made by many other Members, including and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I point to some practical aspects. The fact of the matter is that the asylum system is in chaos. The number of cases that are waiting to be assessed would fill Wembley Stadium. This Government are in real difficulty and the next Government, whoever they are, will be in equal difficulty if we do not find a way forward. I accept all the legal difficulties that have been raised very effectively, but let us also keep in mind the practical aspects, and that if this is allowed to continue there will be a very unfortunate effect on relations between communities in our country.

The noble Lord is an expert in these areas. If the Bill goes through, what is his estimate of how many people will be relocated from the backlog that he has referred to, and over how many years? I think it could take up to 20 years. How will that deplete Wembley Stadium?

I do not think that anybody has any idea of the answer to that. That is one of the difficulties. I am pointing to the social difficulties that will also follow. Therefore, we must give the Government some space in order to make an impression on the future inflow of cases to this country.

My Lords, I also pay tribute to the quality of the contributions that we have had from so many noble Lords in the debate on this group. I recognise some of the shortcomings of my Amendment 29, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, pointed out, but it is an attempt to discuss refoulement. I will come back to that.

The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, spoke to, have much to commend them about ensuring the role of the courts, as does my noble friend Lady Lister’s amendment, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. Indeed, so do the other comments from the noble Lords, Lord Deben, Lord Clarke and Lord Purvis, and many others. I will put those amendments and our discussions in the context of something that we have heard much talk about: the importance of the unwritten constitution on which our country functions, and the role and importance of the House of Lords.

I do not believe that what I am going to say is true of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, or his colleague, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart. But it is true that something was published on Monday evening— I did not see it until this morning, when it was sent around as part of the House of Lords Library summary of press cuttings that are sent to many of us, if not all of us. It said that the Prime Minister of our country

“challenged Labour and the House of Lords to back the bill, saying: ‘We are committed to getting it through parliament, but unfortunately, we don’t have a majority in the House of Lords’”.

A vote was lost in this House of Lords. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, a vote was had and His Majesty’s Opposition officially did not support it, and we have never talked about blocking or delaying the Bill. We are discussing these amendments today, so why is the Prime Minister saying that we are talking about blocking and delaying it? I would have thought that if we are talking about the constitution, we have a perfect right to stand up in here. All Members of this House, from all the different parties, have made different contributions with respect to the Bill to try to ask the Government to think again and revise what they are doing. What is unconstitutional about that? We might as well pack up. What is the point of our debates and discussions—the brilliant speeches we have heard today and a couple of days ago? Even if we disagree, what is the point of it, if all the Prime Minister of our country says is that we are being deliberately destructive and trying to block the Bill, when we said quite categorically that we are not going to?

To continue:

“Everyone else right now as we speak is lining up to do deals”—

this is the Prime Minister—

“in the House of Lords to block us … We’ve already seen that in the Commons”.

Does it make any difference what anybody says? The amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, spoke to on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile; the comments that the noble Lords, Lord Clarke and Lord Deben, made; the comments that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, made the previous day—do they make any difference? Are we just going through a rubber-stamping process here? What is the constitutional position of the House of Lords if the Prime Minister of our country is saying that none of the amendments that we are discussing—in this group, the last group, the next group and the groups that will come next Monday—means anything?

The worst thing was when I read in the Sun that all 93 amendments that have been tabled are “wrecking amendments”. That goes for the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, who was in his place a moment ago. He has tabled an amendment, as has the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. They are not “wrecking amendments”. They are doing the proper job of this House to say to the Government, “Have you really got this right? Do you really not think you should think again?”.

I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, and through him the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the others: when we have these debates, do they go back to the department and say, “Coaker got up and had a real go at us about something. Did he have a point?”. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, or the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Howard, said this, and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said that. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said this, and my noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Lister tabled these amendments, including those we have today about torture. Is it worth bothering? Is the Prime Minister saying that this is just them trying to stop the Bill, when people in this Chamber have the integrity and belief that it is their job to question the Government? That is the constitutional role of this House of Lords, and we should be proud of it and stand up for it. We will not be intimidated or bullied by a Prime Minister into just accepting that we have no right to question the Government because he says it. Will the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, take that back to the Cabinet? Will the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, take it back to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister?

It is good to see the Government Chief Whip here and I hope that she will make those representations as well, because it is really important. It does not matter which amendment we are talking about. This Chamber deserves that respect from the Government: to listen to what is said and to make the counter-argument if they do not agree with it. It is perfectly reasonable for the Government to do that as well.

I could not believe what I read this morning. I am sure it is an opinion shared by the majority in this House that even if people disagree, they have the right to be heard and have what they say considered by the Government of the day. That is the constitutional position our country has existed upon, and a constitutional arrangement of which we should all be proud. Nobody is trying to block or wreck the Bill, but we have a perfect right to stand up and say whether the Government have got it right.

The amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, were spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. What can be more important than asking whether the Government are seeking to undermine the role of the courts in determining whether the rule of law is being upheld? Is it not reasonable to ask the Government that question, and to table amendments to that effect? Is it not reasonable for my noble friend Lady Lister to ask whether torture is a factor? The Government are perfectly entitled to say that amendments are unnecessary, but these are legitimate questions, and they cannot simply say, “We’re going to ignore them. This is the Government’s position”. Real questions have been asked about the rule of law, and the Government are just saying, “We’re going to overturn the Supreme Court judgment not through an argument or opinion, but by simply changing the facts and ruling that Rwanda is safe. It doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court determined —we’re going to do that”.

I turn to my own Amendment 29 and will read from the JCHR report. The main reason it gives is that

“the Supreme Court, after considering all the evidence placed before it, held that Rwanda was not a safe country because of the risk that individuals sent there would be subjected to refoulement”.

My amendment therefore seeks to address the Supreme Court’s concern that there was a risk of refoulement. The Minister will no doubt respond by saying that the Government have dealt with that, because Article 10(3) of the treaty provides the mechanism to do so. The heart of the problem throughout is that the Government are saying that Rwanda is safe, whereas all the various amendments say that, as the Supreme Court and the International Agreements Committee recognise, it may be that Rwanda becomes safe. What cannot be simply stated is that Rwanda is safe now.

Article 10(3) states:

“The Parties shall cooperate to agree an effective system for ensuring that removal contrary to this obligation does not occur”.

Can the Minister tell us what that effective system is? Is it already in operation, and if not, when will it be? What is the timeline, and what do we know about it since? It is through Article 10(3) of the treaty that the Government seek to address the problem the Supreme Court identified.

The Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, will no doubt say, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, did on the previous set of amendments, that this is necessary because of the deterrent effect. The very helpful briefing on the Bill provided by the House of Lords Library reminds us that the Permanent Secretary required ministerial direction to carry on with respect to deterrence, because of the lack of evidence that the Rwanda policy had any deterrent effect. The Home Secretary of the day provided that letter.

I finish where I started. I ask for an assurance from the Minister that our amendments are not seen as wrecking amendments by the Ministers dealing with the Bill, and that they take them back to their departments and consider whether some Members of your Lordships’ House may actually have a point. Rather than blocking the Bill or even delaying it, many of your Lordships are trying to say, “Even though we oppose it, we are trying to improve it”. This House deserves, at the very least, that respect from the Government.

My Lords, it is customary on these occasions to thank all noble Lords directly for their contributions to the Bill; but, in light of the remarks the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, made from the Opposition Front Bench, the Committee will pardon me if I address those first.

I first acknowledge that, with characteristic courtesy, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, approached me informally and indicated that he would be making these points. He was also, if I may say so, animated by a characteristic concern for the standing of this House. I can give the assurance—which, if assurance were necessary, my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom gave me a moment ago as the noble Lord was winding up—that we as Ministers reflect very carefully on matters raised at every stage in the House, as we do with Questions, and we are concerned to pass back to directing departments and colleagues the views of the House, with an end to finding community between all sides of the House, or at least majorities of the House where possible. We do not allow these matters to go unsaid. Regarding one matter the noble Lord raised, the Government Front Bench can take no responsibility for the editorial policy of a national newspaper. Nonetheless, we can observe where that newspaper errs in anything it says.

Is the Minister saying that the quote of the Prime Minister’s words is not accurate?

I certainly was not. I was saying that, when the noble Lord quoted, or referred to the content of, that newspaper article describing every amendment as being a wrecking one, that is the matter to which I referred. I am happy to put the record straight. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his nod of acceptance.

I thank all noble Lords who participated in this debate. The Bill builds upon the treaty between the United Kingdom and the Government of Rwanda, signed on 5 December 2023. The treaty, along with evidence of changes in Rwanda since summer 2022, will enable Parliament to conclude that Rwanda is safe, and the new Bill provides Parliament with the opportunity so to do.

That last proposition came under attack from a number of areas in the House. If I do not mention or cite them all by name, noble Lords will forgive me. I mention in particular the contributions from my noble friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, speaking from the Cross Benches and, indeed, the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench.

I emphasise points made in Committee on Monday. The treaty does not override the judgment of the United Kingdom Supreme Court; rather, it responds to its key findings to ensure that the policy can go ahead. The court recognised in its decision that changes may be delivered in the future which would address the issues it raised. These are those changes. We believe that they address the Supreme Court’s concerns, and we will now aim to move forward with the policy and help put an end to illegal migration.

My Lords, the Minister has raised a really important point concerning the treaty. Clause 2(4) states that

“a court or tribunal must not consider … any claim or complaint that the Republic of Rwanda will not act in accordance with the Rwanda Treaty.”

That is quite significant. The Minister is saying is that the treaty deals with the Supreme Court’s concerns, but the Court will not be able under this Bill to determine whether the concerns that have been raised, which the treaty is meant to deal with, have been dealt with to the satisfaction of the UK Supreme Court. Is that correct?

My Lords, the policy of the Bill is to respond to the United Kingdom Supreme Court’s decision in the form of this treaty and the Bill which accompanies it. This does not, Canute-like, revise or reverse the truth. As I say, it is a response to the findings of the Supreme Court—findings made, as they were, in relation to a period of time which dates from the High Court’s consideration of the matter.

These were findings that related to a period of time. The Government are saying that that period of time has moved on and therefore they make other findings. But they are also saying that no one may make any other findings, even if that moves on. In other words, the Government are saying that there is only one moment in which we can make this judgment. We have not got there yet—the Government have said we have not got there—but there is one moment, and once the judgment is made, although I do not know what the opposite of “retrospectively” is, it cannot then be changed, even if the facts change and even if the courts want to change it on the evidence. Will he please tell me whenever or wherever, in what Bill, that has ever been put before this or any other House?

My Lords, the point of the principle of the Bill is to remove the matter from the consideration of the civil courts and to place it before the court of Parliament; to take the matter from the civil courts and place it in the international and diplomatic sphere.

What are the mechanisms —since, as my noble friend Lord Scriven said, the courts are no longer able to look at this—by which we can judge whether Rwanda will adhere to its treaty obligations? The Minister said that this is now going to be a duty of the court of Parliament: what is our mechanism in Parliament for doing that?

First, I remind the noble Lord of some of the constitutional truths that were adverted to in the debate on Monday. No Parliament can bind its successor. Parliament can always come back and revisit matters in future. On the specific point of how Parliament will come to learn of any matters that are of concern, I will refer to this in greater detail in the course of my submission, but I can refer the noble Lord to the independent monitoring committee which the treaty and the Bill establish, and to the work that that will do, feeding back to the joint committee of the two Governments.

I am fascinated by this new “court of Parliament” concept. Anyone who thinks that the Age of Reason ended in 1800 will need to read Hansard tomorrow because, if I may say so, the Conservative Privy Council Benches have perhaps delivered some of the finest contributions to this Committee today. I, for one, will be rereading the noble Lord, Lord Deben, because enlightenment is clearly not a single moment but something that has to be fought for again and again so as not to end up where the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, warned us. If there is now to be a court of Parliament that is examining the safety of Rwanda on an ongoing basis, I do think the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, should have an answer on what procedures there are, under the Bill as currently drafted, for these monitoring committees to report not just to the Government but to the court of Parliament that is being so elegantly expounded by the noble and learned Lord.

My Lords, before the Minister answers the question, this is a rather unusual court, because it is a court that does not afford the most basic rights of justice to the people who will be affected by the decisions we make. In any other court, if you are about to be exported to a place you say will torture you, you can normally at least have your voice heard; but not in this new court that the noble and learned Lord has just set up.

First, as the noble and learned Lord is perfectly well aware, the Bill blocks the possibility of refoulement and of return to any country other than the United Kingdom. In relation to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that Parliament is a court is a familiar and well-known concept; it is a name by which Parliament is well known.

Not on the theory point but on the practical point of what the Bill states, can the Minister just expand a bit more? He said that there will be a monitoring committee that will report to the joint committee of the Governments. How will they report to Parliament if we are to make a judgment, subsequently, that we wish to repeal this?

As I said to the noble Lord when first responding to him, I will address those matters in more detail in the course of my submission.

Clause 2 creates a conclusive presumption that Rwanda is generally safe and will not send someone to another country in breach of the refugee convention. I respectfully disagree with my noble friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol and others that this amounts to an abuse, far less to a constitutional innovation. In relation to a point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, made on the matter of how the courts might respond, the noble and learned Lord put it to the Committee that there would be one case that would decide. I congratulate him on his optimism, but he must surely recognise—reflecting on the practice of immigration across the decades—that what happens is that, where a position is advanced and set forth before the court, it will remain open subsequently for people to argue that there has been a change in fact or a change in circumstances. Therefore, the proposal that the noble and learned Lord advances to the Committee that there would simply be one case that would determine all things is, I regret, a proposition to which I cannot accede.

The conclusive presumption as to the safety of Rwanda enables Parliament to confirm that Rwanda is safe for the purposes of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership. It reflects the strength of commitment from the Government of Rwanda on the safety and support that they will provide to individuals relocated there. Clause 2(2) notes that a decision-maker means the Secretary of State, immigration officers and the courts, including tribunals, when considering a decision relating to the relocation of an individual to Rwanda under provision of the Immigration Act. Clause 2 also excludes several general grounds of challenge and, as set out in subsection (3), prohibits generalised appeals or reviews.

As I have said already, the Government have signed an internationally legally binding treaty responding to the Supreme Court’s conclusions, in particular on the issue of refoulement. We have been clear that Rwanda will not remove any individual relocated there to another country, except to the United Kingdom in very limited circumstances. The implementation of these provisions in practice will be kept under review by the independent monitoring committee, whose role is enhanced by the treaty, and which will ensure compliance with the obligations. Therefore, as set out in subsection (4), there is no reason for a court or tribunal to consider any claim that Rwanda may remove a person to another state, that an individual may not receive fair and proper consideration of an immigration claim in Rwanda or that Rwanda will not abide by the treaty terms. Finally, subsection (5) is a “notwithstanding” provision, requiring courts to honour—I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I am so sorry, I thought the noble Lord was poised to intervene.

Finally, subsection (5) is a “notwithstanding” provision, requiring courts to honour the previous clauses, notwithstanding all relevant domestic law, the Human Rights Act 1998 to the extent that it is disapplied by this Bill, and any alternative interpretation of international law reached by the court or tribunal.

The effect of Amendments 19, 21, 25 and 28, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, would be to remove the requirement for decision-makers and courts or tribunals to treat conclusively Rwanda as a safe country. That is similar to the terms of Amendment 22, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German. These amendments would allow individuals to present evidence to challenge removal decisions on the grounds that Rwanda is not generally a safe country.

I just remind the noble and learned Lord that he said he would return to the temporal issue of how Parliament would be able to reassess the safety of Rwanda, if facts changed—if there were a sudden change of government or a coup, or if the monitoring committee found that people had been refouled, which was the fear of the Supreme Court, of course. What processes, under the Bill as currently crafted, are there for the court of Parliament to take an application to reconsider its safety, so that it is not determined as safe for all time?

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s point echoes the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. I had a brief communication on it with my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom as the noble Baroness was speaking. I think the temporal point that the noble Baroness referred to and the noble Lord raised is to be dealt with in a subsequent group. Perhaps noble Lords will be content if we treat that matter in detail in that subsequent group. I have no doubt that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will bear in mind the burden of their questions and will come back to us if we have not answered them to their satisfaction. I am obliged to them.

I move on to consider Clause 4, which preserves the ability of individuals to challenge removal due to their particular circumstances where there is compelling evidence that Rwanda is not a safe country for them, other than where that allegation relates to onward refoulement, in relation to which the treaty is very clear. That is the appropriate mechanism to ensure that an individual’s circumstances have been considered.

In response, therefore, to Amendments 37 and 42, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord German, we maintain that it is right that the scope for individualised claims remains limited to prevent persistent legal challenges covering the same ground and to enable us to remove individuals who have entered the United Kingdom illegally.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, raised, quite appropriately, the constitutional implications of our response to the Supreme Court’s decision. I underscore my submission to the Committee: no constitutional violence has been done in referring this matter to Parliament, and in taking it into the international, diplomatic and political sphere, as opposed to the civil courts. Ultimately, returning to a remark made by my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne, who is in his place, this Committee must be concerned with the question of accountability for decisions.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, also made the point that evidence must be of an holistic nature. The rules of evidence are based on the principle of exclusion of that which has nothing to do with matters of fact and law with which a particular case is concerned. I wholly accept the point that the noble Lord was trying to make, which was that all individual circumstances must be borne and considered in the round. Although referring to individual reasons is appropriate for considering individual cases, I dispute his submission that it is appropriate for the systemic general claim. I do not accept that.

If the arrangements in the treaty are not in place, that would be specific to the individual, yet the Bill excludes that being looked at by the court. Would that kind of issue—whether the provisions within the treaty are in place—not be relevant to an individual case?

The only thing relevant to an individual case would be matters specific to the individual.

In line with our obligations, I assure noble Lords—in particular the noble Lords, Lord Scriven and Lord German —that individuals will still be able to challenge removal decisions on the basis of compelling evidence that Rwanda is unsafe for them due to their particular individual circumstances. The threshold for such claims is a high one, rightly. People must not be allowed to frustrate and delay removal with the kind of legal challenges we have been seeing for some time, which the Bill is intended to prevent. I have spoken at length—

Surely we come back to the point about temporality, which a number of noble Lords have raised. Surely the circumstances of an individual, and the nature of the Rwanda they are being transported to on the day their flight lands, are relevant to the individual case.

My Lords, that would depend entirely on the case presented by the individual.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for tabling Amendment 30 with regard to victims of torture. With reference to the points of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in winding up, while we will reflect on the matters she raises, at this stage I cannot support their inclusion in the Bill.

Is the Minister going on to another point? I did ask some specific questions.

I am of course ready to take specific questions that the noble Baroness develops, but it was not my intention to pass by her contribution at this stage.

Is the Minister going to answer my questions?

My Lords, as I have said several times during this debate, at this and other stages, it is the Government’s assessment that Rwanda, which is a signatory to the United Nations convention against torture, is generally a safe country with respect to the rule of law. The treaty, at Article 15(9), provides that the monitoring committee is to develop a complaints system that can be used by relocated individuals. The committee will be expected to report any significant issues to the joint committee straightaway, and may provide advice and recommendations to the joint committee on actions that should be taken to address issues that have been identified. Any issues escalated will involve reporting directly to the joint committee co-chairs in relation to emergency and urgent situations. We will continue to assess complaints and observations by Redress and the other organisations to which the noble Baroness, and others—the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, made mention of this as well—have referred when they are referred to us.

There is no obligation on the monitoring committee to publish its report, so how will we know what they are?

My Lords, as I said to the noble Lord, this matter is to be dealt with in further groupings. In the interests of saving the Committee’s time, I will revert to consideration of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett.

The treaty which the United Kingdom has agreed with Rwanda makes express provision for the treatment of relocated individuals, demonstrating the commitment of both parties to upholding fundamental human rights and freedoms without discrimination and in line with both our domestic and international obligations. Rwanda’s obligations under these international agreements are embedded too in its domestic legal provisions.

The High Court found that it was generally safe for individuals relocated under the MEDP to be in Rwanda. In view of its finding on the issue of refoulement, the Supreme Court found it unnecessary to decide the question of whether individuals were generally at risk of ill treatment in Rwanda. The Court of Appeal likewise did not reach a conclusion on this point. This means that the ruling of the High Court on the point of general safety remains undisturbed.

The amendment has two parts. One was the about treatment of asylum seekers in Rwanda and that there should not be evidence of torture for two years. The other was about asylum seekers who have already suffered torture. I asked a couple of specific questions in relation to them. One was about what investigations the Government have done about the support they can expect in Rwanda. Supporting people who have gone through torture is more than just everyday support. These people have been traumatised. They need help with their mental and physical health. Even in this country, that help is often inadequate, and they have to turn to civil society groups. The point was made the other day that civil society is still quite weak in Rwanda, so I do not know whether there are any organisations that could specifically help torture survivors. I also asked why the Home Office does not routinely collect data about the number of people in detention who have suffered torture, given that the Home Office’s rules say that torture is an example of a vulnerable group that needs special support in detention.

My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Baroness’s question about why those statistics are not kept. My noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom tells me that they are not. That may be a matter to be taken back to the Home Office to be given consideration. It would be pointless for me to speculate on the reasons why that should not be.

I have not taken part in this debate—I came in only earlier this afternoon—but on this I have some information. It is that the mental health situation in Rwanda is very poor. The country suffered a genocide, as we all know, some 30 years ago. There is a very high level of mental illness within its population. Apparently 25% of the population have mental health problems or suffer depression or recurring episodes of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is intergenerational, so the next generation also suffers the consequences. There are only 15 psychiatrists in the whole country and very few trained psychologists. We are talking about a very underresourced country when it comes to mental health problems.

My Lords, I am reminded that Article 13 of the treaty makes the specific provision:

“Rwanda shall have regard to information provided”

by the United Kingdom

“about a Relocated Individual relating to any special needs that may arise as a result of their being a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, and shall take all necessary steps to ensure that these needs are accommodated”.

I could well have missed it when I read the treaty, but the quotation the Minister has given talked about human trafficking and slavery but not torture. My noble friend has reinforced my fears about what will happen to torture survivors, who will probably have very serious mental health needs, if they are removed to Rwanda, however “safe” it might be.

My Lords, all relocated individuals will receive protection appropriate to them and assistance according to their needs, including, where necessary, referral to specialist services to protect their welfare. Furthermore, it remains possible for an individual to raise a claim that their individual circumstances mean that Rwanda is not a safe country for them. Should such a claim succeed in demonstrating that serious, irreversible harm will result from removal to Rwanda, that removal will not take place. We expect such successful claims to be rare, bearing in mind the safety of Rwanda, which I have already set out in my response.

The United Kingdom and Rwanda will continue to work closely to make this partnership a success. I do not accept that individuals relocated to Rwanda would be at risk of torture or any other form of inhumane or degrading treatment. I assure the Committee that, under this Bill, decision-makers will already be able to consider compelling evidence relating specifically to a person’s individual circumstances. Should someone with particular vulnerability concerns be relocated to Rwanda, safeguarding processes will be in place.

That Rwanda cares deeply about refugees is amply demonstrated by its work with the UNHCR to accommodate some of the most vulnerable populations who have faced trauma, detention and violence. We are confident that those relocated under our partnership would be safe, as per the assurances negotiated in our legally binding treaty. I therefore invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, it was once the practice of our courts to prevent the jury from dining until they had reached their verdict. Rising to my feet on the wrong side of 3.30 pm, it seems that this practice may live on, unreformed, in what we must get used to calling “the court of Parliament”. Your Lordships may feel that they have had enough food for thought in this debate and that it is time for sustenance of a different kind, so I shall be as brief as I can in response.

What a debate it has been—fully up to the standards of its predecessor earlier today. I will pick out a few of the highlights from the Back Benches. We had lessons from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, on precedent. It seems one has to go back to 1531 to find a precedent for this Bill. The moral I took from his tale was that it ended badly for both the cook and the Act.

We were reminded by the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady D’Souza, of the astonishing fact that the courts must not consider even a complaint of risk of torture in Rwanda or a country to which Rwanda might send somebody. As the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and the nobl