'Rotten to the core Rwanda Bill is performative cruelty of dying Government'
This year is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What an irony, and what a shameful indictment of ministers, that the Government is marking it by putting in front of Parliament a Bill to wave aside our human rights laws and the judgment of the highest domestic court in the land.
Rishi Sunak’s insulting and dangerous Rwanda Bill attacks human rights; degrades our democratic structures; and disrespects the role the UK has played in helping to shape international rules, including our contribution to drafting the European Convention on Human Rights after the horrors of World War Two. It represents a grim slide into authoritarianism that must be stopped immediately in its tracks.
The Bill rides roughshod over a unanimous Supreme Court judgment made just three weeks ago. Our highest domestic court ruled that by sending refugees to Rwanda, the UK could breach its obligations under the ECHR – an admission made by Government lawyers on the very cover of this Bill – and other international law such as the Refugee Convention, UN Convention Against Torture, UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as domestic law.
Caroline Lucas says the Tory plan must be scrapped (Peter Summers)It explicitly disapplies multiple sections of the landmark Human Rights Act, including basic minimum standards that protect us all. Courts would be blocked from considering if removing an individual to Rwanda could result in them facing torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. What kind of Government would want the courts to ignore that?
The Prime Minister has attempted to justify this cynical and sinister attack by saying “parliament is sovereign”. But Parliament can only be meaningfully sovereign within a functioning legal and constitutional system, which this Bill totally undermines. Without the courts being able to interpret laws, the legal system simply doesn't work – and Parliament doesn’t either.
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Everyone wants to protect people from terrible people-smugglers and from crossing the world’s busiest shipping lane in dangerous inflatable boats. The first step in doing that is by introducing safe and legal routes as an alternative. But this Bill has nothing to do with that.
It is the performative cruelty of a dying administration and a grotesque waste of money that is neither practical nor strategic. And there is a human cost to this cruelty – as we now learn an asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset has died – a tragedy for which this Government must take responsibility.
But most important of all the outsourcing our human rights obligations to a third country is downright immoral.
It’s not just immoral – it's also absurd. Legislating to say Parliament believes Rwanda is a safe country doesn’t simply make it so. You can’t sign a quick treaty one week and then legislate the next to make a country safe when the highest court in the land has just said the opposite.
The UK Government is now being schooled by the Rwandan Government – who despite its own poor human rights record is now sending out warning shots that even they’ll pull out of this shoddy deal if the UK Government breaches international law to implement it.
I am voting against this Bill as there is no ‘tweak’ or amendment that can improve something that is rotten to its core. It is a doomed and draconian attempt to reassert the Prime Minister’s fragile claim to non-existent authority, but it has serious consequences and sets an extremely dangerous precedent.
As MPs have said previously, fascism does not always arrive wearing jackboots; it can come knocking more subtly than that. We’ve already seen suppression of the right to strike, rights to protest and other democratic principles and standards seriously eroded. Now we have this flagrant attack on human rights, on our courts and separation of powers in this country.
The Government must abandon its cruel, immoral and unworkable Rwanda plan and re-establish the UK's good standing as a member of the ECHR and international community.
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