Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I am extremely grateful to the Minister. She has certainly answered, but whether she has answered satisfactorily depends on one’s point of view. The reason that I am not convinced is made clear in the JCHR report. It will save a lot of time if I use that as an aid. Paragraph 149 is quite brief, and in it we explained what the minority said in Chahal:"““The minority in Chahal held that States are entitled under Article 3 to balance the extent of the potential risk of ill-treatment of the deportee on the one hand against the threat to their national security on the other. In other words, on the minority’s view, a State is entitled to expel an individual on national security grounds even where there is a substantial risk of torture or ill-treatment in the receiving country.””" That is the proposition that the Government now contend for and on which they lost in Chahal. The committee goes on to say:"““In our view, it follows from the Government’s acceptance of the absolute nature of the torture prohibition that considerations of national security cannot be balanced against the risk of torture, because that presupposes returning somebody to a risk of torture because national security trumps their right not to be tortured””." I do not understand what the Government’s answer to that is. It is no use saying, ““That was the minority; maybe that will become the majority””. The question is how the Government will answer our argument that in their view of Article 3 you could send someone back to a country where there is a substantial risk of torture, even though another provision of the torture convention specifically says that you cannot send someone to a country where there is a substantial risk of torture. I do not understand how the Government can square that circle. That is why their case is hopeless, because they seek to read into an absolute prohibition a balance, the result of which would enable them to send someone, however much they said they would not, to a country where they face the risk of torture. The only other point that I want to make is that it is not just in Chahal that the court reached that conclusion. As we say in footnote 138, in subsequent cases such as Selmouni v France in 1999, V v UK in 1999, Labita v Italy in 2000, each time the court has reaffirmed the Chahal judgment. It has done it three times, and it has done it recently. Those are my two points. First, how the Government answer our criticism of the minority judgment as leading to a breach of the torture convention as well as the European Convention on Human Rights by exposing someone to the risk of torture in another country. The other is, how can one think that the court will change its mind when it has not only decided in Chahal in a majority judgment but done it unanimously—as far as I am aware it was done unanimously, but I may be wrong about that—in three subsequent cases involving France, the UK and Italy respectively? That is why, with respect, this is an exercise in futility.