Good afternoon, Mr Evans, and thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate in reference to my amendments 1, 2 and 3 to the Bill and some others that I will cover during the course of my remarks. I am not a lawyer or an immigration specialist, but I have sought advice, done my research and, above all, spoken to the people of my constituency.
This is the first time that I have been sufficiently animated to speak in a debate on this issue. Contrary to what we hear regularly from hon. and right hon. Members, when I walk the streets of Delyn and speak to my constituents, almost none of them raise the issue of illegal migration as being among the things they are most concerned about. I appreciate that rural north Wales is a different place to many constituencies, but it is worth noting for the record that it is not the priority of everyone in the country. They would rather the Government spent more time improving public services, making our streets safer, returning us to a period of greater economic stability and—dare I say it—aiming for prosperity, but here we are in another effort to solve the intractable problem of small boat crossings with this Bill.
Some elements do not necessarily sit well with me, but some of the amendments, sadly, sit even worse. Some of the rhetoric that we hear on this subject is quite alarming. I have tried in my small number of amendments to apply a little common sense and compromise, neither of which appear to be in abundant supply when it comes to discussing this issue.
I listened carefully to the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who is sadly no longer in his place, who spoke passionately on this issue and answered my question and others put to him in interventions very well, but I cannot help but retain a feeling of the fundamental unfairness of some of his amendments. I will expand on that later.
Turning to my amendments, amendment 1 seeks to compel the Home Secretary to confirm on an ongoing basis that Rwanda remains a safe country. I have no interest in restarting the debate about whether it is safe now; for the purposes of this legislation, we assume that it is. What I am trying to address in the amendment is the political and social instability that exists in many parts of Africa, and that regime change is more common in that part of the world than any other.
It will be 30 years this year since the horrific Rwandan genocide in 1994, and a lot of things have happened in those years, largely down to stability and the steps taken by President Kagame. It is probably worth noting that since 1994, Rwanda has had two Presidents, whereas the UK has had eight Prime Ministers of varying levels of honesty and competence. It might therefore seem unusual to table an amendment on regime change, but it is a real concern none the less.
In 2021, coups d’état ousted four Heads of State in sub-Saharan Africa. Elected leaders in other African nations were accused of enacting a more authoritarian approach, presumably to stave off a similar rise of forces against them. Between 2017 and 2019, President Bouteflika of Algeria, President al-Bashir of Sudan and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe were ousted after a combined 90 years in power. In a paper released two years ago almost to the day, experts from the London School of Economics and Political Science showed that,
“their removal, rather than a direct consequence of mass protests and economic downturns, was the culmination of ripened factionalism, which had blossomed after the leaders’ attempts to centralise power.”
That simply illustrates the potential volatility of politics in the region and the rationale behind my amendment. It is not an onerous requirement that the Home Secretary
must lay before the House a report every 12 months confirming that Rwanda remains safe. As a responsible partner to various international agreements and conventions, it would seem the least we should do in that regard.
I will take amendments 2 and 3 together, as they are related, as well as commenting on other amendments on the same issue. As a layperson who is not legally trained in any way, but hopefully has a decent dose of common sense, I find it unthinkable that individuals against whom any kind of judgment is made would not be allowed the right to appeal against that judgment. That type of thinking puts our legal process back 100 years; it is frankly beneath us and beneath what this Parliament should stand for.
We have in this country a robust and well-established legal system, from magistrates to county court, Crown court, High Court, Court of Appeal and finally the Supreme Court, with various tribunals and other such devices for specific purposes. As a matter of law and simple fairness, we allow people to question and appeal. Shoplifters can appeal. Car thieves can appeal. Abusers can appeal. Perpetrators of domestic violence can appeal. Rapists can appeal. Murderers can appeal.
I have listened carefully to the arguments of some of my colleagues, both personally and what has been said in the House and in various media outlets. I feel compelled to conclude that the trend towards dog-whistle politics and putting the label of enemy on people where no such label needs to apply seems to have got the better of some people. I point out to colleagues that although it is often the noisiest voices that call for migrants simply to be rounded up and shipped out, the noisiest voices are almost certainly not the voices of the majority of the people of the United Kingdom, which is and always has been a welcoming and kind country to those in need.
We can point to all manner of schemes to show that that has been the case. Even recently, between 2015 and June of last year, more than 179,000 people arrived in the UK from Ukraine. Over that same period, more than 123,000 people have come to the UK on the basis of being granted British national overseas status and more than 50,000 people have come as part of the Afghan and Syrian resettlement programmes. We are a kind and supportive country to those in need—but have we become what many consider to be a soft touch? Perhaps in some ways we have.
I look at the movement of people in two distinct ways: they are either moving away from something or moving towards something. What I mean by that is that some people are, as we all know, in a horrific situation. Whatever people think of the Government in the UK, it does not carry out large-scale attacks against its own people, as we have seen in Syria, and the Government of the UK does not routinely persecute and incarcerate people who dare to speak out against them. Of course we recognise that people in many places across the world need to flee. They need to move away from that situation.
Where I end up, however, and where I have sympathy with some of the arguments made by those on the right among Conservative Members, is that there is a clear and distinct dividing line between someone moving away from danger by necessity and someone moving towards something else by choice. That is where much of the message is lost and drowned out by noisy activists
on both sides, when a calm and common-sense approach to thinking about the problem would make it very clear. Those people I mentioned earlier, in danger and in fear of persecution, incarceration or worse, must of course do all they can to remove themselves from that situation and to save their lives and those of their families. I have absolutely no problem with that.
Where the problem lies, however, is that once there is no danger and the fear of persecution, incarceration or worse has passed, movement is out of choice rather than necessity. People are then moving towards something they consider preferable, rather than away from danger—the danger is over. I completely understand the arguments and the confusion about why people need to move from France, a perfectly safe country. Aside from the occasional street protest, and baggage handlers battering luggage when they actually turn up for work, France is a civilised, modern and, above all, safe country where people are not in danger, so people who come from there are no longer seeking to escape but are in fact moving towards something preferable. That is where the arguments of certain charities and some Opposition Members sadly lose their credibility.
The problem is that, once they have made that journey across the channel, they are our responsibility, and we simply cannot send them back unless France agrees to take them, which it will not—why would it? Aside from the fact that the French have no desire to increase their own problem, we have just spent the last decade calling them and their friends everything under the sun and saying that we do not want anything more to do with them, so of course they are not inclined to help us deal with this problem.
What do we do when we cannot just send people back and have to deal with the situation ourselves? We have heard many Opposition Members say that we cannot do this or that, but no one has said, “Here is what we would do instead.” Many people have said throughout the debate that there is no capacity in the UK—that we do not have enough houses for everyone, or enough doctors, dentists, hospitals schools or general infrastructure for even our existing population—and they are right. Relocating asylum seekers to a safe third country is a long-established mechanism used all over the world—it is nothing new—but I do not like the push for a lack of due process in order to remove people’s rights in favour of speed, expediency and a populist movement.
Amendments 2 and 3 would balance those competing needs by allowing for appeals if they are heard remotely from Rwanda post-deportation, which seems perfectly feasible. If covid taught us anything helpful, it was that we could be a lot more flexible in our use of technology than we had been. Since 2020, courts have been rapidly moving online: the cloud video platform was introduced in response to the pandemic, and a video hearing system is already being used nationally in tax and property tribunals, as well as in Chester Crown court, not far from my constituency. By all accounts, it works seamlessly and is a great success. His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service plans to transition to a new service of video hearings covering more areas, so it seems perfectly reasonable for the same technology to be used to hear appeals against asylum decisions.
As the Government have considerably narrowed the eligibility of appeals in clauses 2 and 3, the chance of any eligible claim rearing its head is negligible, so there
is no reason that individuals cannot continue to be removed before having their appeal heard via a Government-established video conferencing facility in Rwanda. I am aware of the established principle laid down in law, in the European convention on human rights, that people cannot be removed to Rwanda if there is an imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm. The Government rightly need to pay heed to that situation, as the UK is very much a signatory to the ECHR—a situation that should not even be considered for change.
As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), mentioned, it would not be appropriate simply to ignore that rule. I thank the Minister for the time he took to address that concern in relation to my amendment and to explain why he did not feel that my proposals would be possible. I completely accept his explanation and am pleased to have had it confirmed by the right hon. Lady earlier, but I hope that a simple common-sense approach will be taken in the aftermath. For example, colleagues have expressed concern that women who are heavily pregnant might be able to appeal on the basis of being unfit to fly. I hope that the process will recognise that anyone determining themselves fit enough to take a 30-mile journey across a dangerous sea in a barely floating craft that could capsize at any moment cannot then claim to be unfit to take a flight in perfectly comfortable and safe conditions.
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The Government have rightly narrowed down the possible reasons for appeals so much that I am astonished that there are still people who are arguing it is not enough. Once again, we allow murderers to appeal. We remain a civilised society; we cannot simply rule it out. We hear all the time about people being wrongly convicted of things: we have spent the last few weeks hearing about a bunch of people who were wrongly convicted in the Horizon scandal. I do not believe for a second that anyone in the House would have denied them the right to appeal, so I implore colleagues not to lose sight of their humanity. The grounds for appeal are so narrow that they will hardly ever apply.
I have spoken for plenty long enough, apart from to say that amendments 56 and 57, which stand in the name of the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), are also eminently sensible and would close another potential loophole. I hope upon hope that colleagues will be able to see the wood for the trees on these issues, understand that entirely taking away the right of appeal would be an affront to our legal framework, and not obstruct the Bill any further.