Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the Government’s world-leading migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda.

The British people have repeatedly voted for controlled immigration and the right to secure borders. This is a Government who act and hear that message clearly, and we are determined to deliver that. Last night we aimed to relocate the first people from our country who arrived here through dangerous and illegal means, including by small boat. Over the course of this week, many and various claims to prevent relocation have been brought forward. I welcomed the decisions of our domestic courts—the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court—to uphold our right to send the flight. However, following a decision by an out-of-hours judge in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, minutes before our flight’s departure, the final individuals remaining on the flight had their removal directions paused while their claims were considered.

I want to make something absolutely clear: the European Court of Human Rights did not rule that the policy or relocations were unlawful, but it prohibited the removal of three of those on last night’s flight. Those prohibitions last for different time periods but are not an absolute bar on their transfer to Rwanda. Anyone who has been ordered to be released by the court will be tagged while we continue to progress their relocation. While this decision by the Strasbourg court to intervene was disappointing and surprising given the repeated and considered judgments to the contrary in our domestic courts, we remain committed to this policy. These repeated legal barriers are very similar to those that we experience with all other removal flights. We believe that we are fully compliant with our domestic and international obligations, and preparations for our future flights and the next flights have already begun. Our domestic courts were of the view that the flight could go ahead.

The case for our partnership with Rwanda bears repeating. We are a generous and welcoming country, as has been shown time and time again. Over 200,000 people have used safe and legal routes to come to the UK since 2015, and most recently Britons have opened their hearts and their homes to Afghan nationals and Ukrainian nationals. But our capacity to help those in need is severely compromised by those who come here illegally and, as we have discussed in this House many, many times, seek to jump the queue because they can afford to pay the people smugglers. It is illegal, and it is not necessary, because they are coming from other safe countries. It is not fair, either on those who play by the rules or on the British taxpayers who have to foot this bill. We cannot keep on spending nearly £5 million a day on accommodation, including hotels. We cannot accept this intolerable pressure on public services and local communities. It makes us less safe as nation, because those who come here illegally do not have the regularised checks or even the regularised status and because evil people-smuggling gangs use the proceeds of their ill-gotten gains to fund other appalling crimes that undermine the security of our country. It is also lethally dangerous for those who are smuggled. People have drowned at sea, suffocated in lorries and perished crossing territories.

This is a shambles; it is shameful, and the Home Secretary has no one but herself to blame. This is not, and never has been, a serious policy, and she knew that when she chartered the plane. She knew that among the people she was planning to send to Rwanda on that plane were torture and trafficking victims, that she did not have a proper screening process in place and that some of them might be children. Can she confirm that the Home Office itself withdrew a whole series of those cases on Friday and yesterday because it knew that there was a problem with them, and that even without the European Court of Human Rights judgment, she was planning to send a plane with just seven people on board, because she had had to withdraw most of the cases at the last minute?

The Home Secretary knows that there is a lack of proper asylum capacity in Rwanda to make fair decisions and that as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says, Rwanda normally deals with only a few hundred cases a year and has only one eligibility officer who prepares the cases. There is also a lack of interpreters and legal advisers to ensure fair decisions. The Home Secretary promised that there would be extra payments to Rwanda for each person transferred, presumably to pay for the extra caseworkers and support, but she has refused to tell us how much. What is she hiding? Will she tell us now how much she promised Rwanda for each of the people she was planning to send yesterday, and how many Rwandan refugees she promised to take in return?

The Home Secretary knows that serious concerns have been raised about Rwandan restrictions on political freedom, the treatment of LGBT people, the fact that 12 refugees were shot by the authorities in 2018 for protesting against food cuts, and the fact that Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers have been returned by Rwanda. She knows that none of those concerns has been addressed.

I always look forward to these exchanges in the House, primarily because—[Interruption.] Perhaps hon. Members would like to listen.

As a point of education for the right hon. Lady, we are not the only country in the world to be adopting this approach. She may be aware that it is an approach that the EU has adopted through its transfer mechanism to Rwanda. Denmark is also in the process of looking at it.

The right hon. Lady raises a number of points that are factually incorrect. [Interruption.] I will come to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East shortly. The purpose of the work that we are doing is to absolutely break the business model of the people smugglers. It is a shame that Opposition Members run down the National Crime Agency.

You are running it down!

Calm down a second. Actually the UK intelligence community are working together to tackle the people smugglers upstream, and we are investing in upstream programmes to tackle the people smugglers.

I have more to say on this subject, of course. Opposition Members keep speaking about asylum seekers who have travelled from Iran, Iraq and other countries, but of course, they have come from France—a safe country. They have not come from Iraq; they have come from France. In the same way, the right hon. Lady said that people have come from Syria; they have come from France and they have paid people smugglers.

Opposition Members do not claim that it is immoral to send people back to European countries for their claims to be considered there. Their logic seems to be that Rwanda is a wonderful country that is good enough to host international summits and world dignitaries, but not to relocate people there, as our global partnership does.

Opposition Members know that people are dying in the channel, but they simply do not have a single workable solution between them. They are choosing sides while the Government are committed to pioneering a way forward. They are clutching at straws when they speak about money, but of course we cannot put a price on lives being lost. We believe in saving lives and breaking the people smuggling model.

On the legal claims that I think the right hon. Lady was referring to—pre-action protocol and national referral mechanism claims—I do not remember her making those points with that synthetic hypothetical rage when she occupied my seat under a previous Labour Government. That Government brought in Acts and powers, including the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, to remove people with no legal basis to be in this country. These are the same powers that we are using to remove individuals with no legal right to be in this country, and of course these are exactly the same powers that, only recently and again today, she was saying could be used if we had not left the EU.

Let me say from the outset that I know the shadow Secretary of State very well, and she is much, much better than some of the comments she came out with today.

I say to the Home Secretary that I was a child in school when people came to this country from Vietnam and from Hong Kong, as well as from Africa, but this is different. This Parliament is supreme, and our courts have said this is right. This is what the British people want us to do—control immigration in relation to those coming across in boats—so how is it right that this Court has overruled all our courts and this Parliament?

My right hon. Friend makes some very important points. He speaks of the generosity of our country, and I stand by that. I think this Government’s record speaks very strongly on supporting people from Afghanistan, Syria, Hong Kong, Ukraine, and the hundreds of thousands of people whom we have supported. He rightly speaks about our domestic courts in the same way as I did in my statement, and it is important to note that the courts have not challenged the legality of our policy.

In fact, I use this moment to pay tribute, which the Opposition parties will not do, to our officials in the Home Office, both in-country and here, for their work on developing the programme and on evidencing the legality of the policy, and how they have worked with Rwanda as a country on its capability and capacity to house people.

These arguments have been challenged in the courts and they have been well heard in the courts. If I may make one final point, our domestic courts have been transparent in their decision making and how they have communicated their verdicts from the High Court, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. What is concerning is the opaque nature of the conduct of last night’s appeal by the European Court of Human Rights in the way that it informed the UK Government about one individual. It is now right that we spend time going back to that Court to get the grounds upon which it made its decision.

I call the SNP spokesperson.

My party continues to deplore this unworkable, illegal and immoral policy. It does nothing to stop smugglers and it inflicts serious harm on victims, despite the Home Secretary’s cloud cuckoo land description of it. We wholeheartedly welcome the cancellation of this flight, and we condemn the reckless approach that the Home Secretary has taken to taxpayers’ money and, more importantly, to the rule of law.

May I take a moment to commend the lawyers involved for their incredible work in the face of some utterly inappropriate commentary from the top of Government? Will the Home Secretary tell her colleagues to heed the call from the Law Society and the Bar Council, and stop attacks on legal professionals who are simply doing their job?

It is not the lawyers who caused this flight to be cancelled nor any court; this flight was stopped because of the stench of yet more Government illegality. [Interruption.] It was. Even the most ardent supporters of this dreadful policy must recognise that there is, to put it mildly, massive dubiety over its lawfulness. The UNHCR, the guardian of the refugee convention, is clear that this is in breach of it. To seek to press ahead before the courts have concluded that issue either way was a reckless waste of taxpayers’ money and shows again this Government’s total disregard for the rule of law.

The Home Secretary should call this off now, and wait for that Court ruling. That is all we are asking for in the meantime. She should start answering the basic questions that we did not get answers to on Monday, such as about oversight, age assessments, and screening for torture survivors and trafficking victims. This is a dreadful mess.

Inevitably, this pitiful policy failure will now, wrongly, be blamed by the usual suspects on the European convention on human rights, so will the Home Secretary recognise what the Prime Minister previously said about the convention being a “great thing”? Will she recognise its importance for devolution, for the Good Friday agreement and for the trade and co-operation agreement, and call off the agitators in her party who want the UK to follow Russia and Belarus through the exit door and on to pariah state status?

As ever—tone is important, if I may say so, in this debate—we respectfully disagree with the hon. Gentleman and his party wholeheartedly. As we have heard throughout the debates on this subject previously, but also on the Nationality and Borders Act, as it now is—thanks to the support we have had from Government Members to deal with smuggling and trafficking, and to change our laws—it is quite clear that the SNP would like to see an end to all removals and all deportations, irrespective of their basis, full stop. That is obviously its policy, and it would like open borders.

It is important to put it on the record that the European Court of Human Rights has not ruled that the policy or removals were unlawful, but it actually prohibited the removal of three of those on the flight last night. That was at the end—

Wait for the ruling!

And, if I may say so, we have asked for that ruling in writing, so we are waiting for that, but those prohibitions are different from the other claims that came up from lawyers—at the very last minute actually—yesterday.

It is also important to recognise that the first ruling provoked those solicitors involved to then go back to the courts to apply for more injunctions for the remaining people on the manifest. Therefore, before all Opposition parties start to condemn a policy that the courts have not ruled as unlawful, it is important that our approach is absolutely proportionate and measured.

Last November, I stood on Dover seafront and mourned 27 people who had drowned in the English channel. Of those people, who had been travelling in these small boats—these unseaworthy vessels—seven were women, one was a teenager and one was a seven-year-old child. In addition, up to 166 are feared to have lost their lives or are missing across the channel: people who were safe already, in France. Overnight, many of my constituents have been in touch with me anguished at developments that have occurred to stop effective action to tackle the crossings. May I urge my right hon. Friend to continue to do everything possible to bring an end to these dangerous journeys, and ask her what representations she has received from the Labour party supporting action to bring these crossings to an end and save lives?

I thank my hon. Friend for the very thoughtful way in which she has made her points and asked her question. In particular, I want to pay tribute to her and to her constituents, because they are on the frontline. I have spent a great deal of time both in my hon. Friend’s constituency and with her, and with the professionals in her constituency—not just in Border Force or on the frontline on the coast, but in her local authority—who do a great deal of work when it comes to housing, providing sanctuary and providing support. We should take this moment to pay tribute to them, because they are on the frontline day in and day out, it is fair to say. I also want to commend them for the way they work with Home Office officials and our operational teams.

My hon. Friend speaks very strongly and powerfully about the lives that have been lost, and I think the House should recognise that this is not just about those crossing the channel. It is about those crossing the Mediterranean, going through European countries and sometimes even those going through parts of Africa and the Sahel. The conditions are absolutely appalling. On that journey I have just spelt out—from north Africa and the Sahel, crossing the Mediterranean and going to EU member states—the EU member states are safe countries, and this is the model that we have to break.

It is a fact—we know this through intelligence work and the UK intelligence network—that a lot of those gangs are based in European member states. While I cannot speak in more detail about the wider work that has taken place, a lot of good, solid co-operation led by this Government has spurred action in EU member states to deal with the smuggling gangs, go after the smugglers, and ensure they are prosecuted.

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Dame Diana Johnson.

The permanent secretary refused to sign off the Rwanda policy on the basis of a lack of evidence of value for money for the taxpayer. That is only the second time in 30 years that the most senior civil servant in the Home Office has had to be ordered by the Home Secretary to implement a policy.

In light of those concerns about wasting public money, will the Home Secretary confirm that on top of the payment of £120 million to Rwanda, the taxpayer will also now be picking up the £0.5 million cost of the flight last night, and all subsequent charter planes, whether they take off or not? Will there be additional payments to Rwanda for people whom Rwanda is expecting, whether or not those people actually arrive?