Members on both sides of the House might agree that the Lords got it right when they said that the timetabling arrangements for this House left a lot to be desired. We have one hour to debate 12 substantive and important amendments, and we will end up voting on them for three hours. It makes absolutely no sense.
I could be very succinct and just say that the SNP position remains that this is an atrocious and horrendous Bill, and therefore we support everything that the House of Lords has attempted to do to rein it in, but I will not. However, out of deference to some of the very good speakers on both sides of this debate, I will try to stick to points on one or two of the amendments.
First, I turn to Lords amendment 5B, which simply states,
“For the avoidance of doubt,”
part 2 is compliant with the refugee convention
“and must be…given effect as such.”
The Minister has said several times that that is precisely the Government’s objective, so why on earth does he have a problem with putting those words in the Bill? I suspect that there are two answers, the first of which is that in reality, part 2 does not remotely live up to the demands of our international obligations. Former Supreme Court judge Lord Brown said in the other place:
“I truly believe, as do many others, that several of these provisions flagrantly breach our obligations as interpreted by the UNHCR”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 April 2022; Vol. 820, c. 1882.]
We respectfully agree with Lord Brown.
I suspect that the second reason for resisting this amendment is that Ministers are desperate to keep those words out of the Bill to make it more difficult to ask a court to adjudicate on whether the Bill is, in fact, consistent with the refugee convention. As Lord Brown said—he was directly addressing something that the Minister said here at the Bill’s last outing—it was
“quite wrong to suggest that there was no need for this amendment because the courts would anyway deal with the challenge to the legislation based on suggested non-compliance. I repeat: the amendment is vital. The courts otherwise cannot go behind the definitive clauses in the Bill and would have to apply them, compliant or not.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 April 2020; Vol. 820, c. 1883.]
We agree; the Bill is fundamental to what we are doing here.