I love surreal art, even if I do not always understand it. This amendment seems to be completely surreal.
Twenty-six pages of the Bill are clearly non-compliant with the refugee convention, starting with Article 11. The Committee will remember Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”—a large canvas with a picture of a large tobacco pipe, nothing else, with across it the words, “This is not a pipe”. It is really dangerous for a Cross-Bencher to cross swords with the Convenor of the Crossbench Peers—there are terrible penalties for it—but the amendment is quite surreal in a Bill where a substantial part, 26 pages, is clearly not compliant with the convention and the protocol. That view has been supported by a number of extraordinarily distinguished lawyers in the Committee—by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for one, and I would like to say that at every stage of this Committee I have found her interventions particularly helpful.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has now made clear that with this amendment he is merely sticking a pin in the Government; it is a warning of intention. If we were to get an Act of Parliament along the lines of Part 2—the asylum provisions—that included the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, I cannot see what the effect would be in the courts.
Would a court pay any attention to the amendment? The court would have to be guided by the 26 pages of specific, detailed provisions that are in breach of the convention, so if the amendment were there it seems to me that it would be surreal and would have no effect. However, if it is merely a warning to the Government, then fine. I certainly share the noble and learned Lord’s view that what is required here is not the ineffective sticking plaster that the amendment would be but radical surgery.