Treaty does not make Rwanda safe place for asylum, bishop tells Lords
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Asylum seekers will not be safe in Rwanda simply because of “a few sheets of paper” in a treaty, the Church of England has said, as the House of Lords inflicted its first defeat on the Government over the deportation scheme.
The Rt Rev Rachel Treweek, the Bishop of Gloucester, urged the Government to do more to ensure Rwanda was safe for asylum seekers before ratifying its treaty with the country and deporting migrants there.
She was among peers who backed by 214 votes to 171 an unprecedented motion in the Lords demanding that the Government delay ratification of the Rwanda Treaty until it could show the African state is safe for asylum seekers. The motion is not binding on the Government but support for it indicates the uphill battle it faces over the next two months to get its Rwanda legislation past the Lords.
The legally binding treaty underpins Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill and puts in place measures correcting the flaws in the deportation scheme that led the Supreme Court to declare it unlawful and Rwanda unsafe for asylum seekers.
Bishop Treweek said it was “remarkable” that the Government was asking Parliament to declare Rwanda safe on the basis of a single treaty that it claims answers all the concerns of the Supreme Court.
“If Parliament does proceed and effectively substitutes its judgement for that of the Supreme Court, I would ask where that leaves the constitutional principle of the separation of functions. And what precedent is this setting,” she said.
‘Random partnership’
She warned that “future assurances” from Rwanda or the UK were not, on their own, a strong enough basis to legislate a country as being safe. “The role of government is indeed to create law but it is not to create injustices,” she said.
“If the Government is so confident the treaty obligations placed on Rwanda will ensure that our random partnership is lawful, why not make this argument again before the judiciary?”
Given the Government was not prepared to do that, Bishop Treweek said it should ensure, instead, that a proposed 10-point action plan of new laws and judicial measures to strengthen Rwanda’s asylum system were in place before the treaty can be ratified.
“This debate is focusing us on the issue of whether or not sending people to Rwanda is safe and humane. The Prime Minister has called on Peers to get on board and do what is right,” she said. “But I fear it cannot be right to assure ourselves that asylum seekers will be protected by a few sheets of paper.”
Lord Kerr, former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office and UK ambassador to the United States, said he “profoundly objected” to Mr Sunak’s Rwanda Bill because it was “incompatible” with the UK’s responsibilities under the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention.
He accused the Government of “washing its hands” of asylum seekers in a way that was “unprecedented and unconscionable”.
Lord Hannay, the UK’s former permanent representative to the UN, said the Rwanda scheme was “costly with so far no evident benefit” and “transgressed a whole range of international commitments” including the Refugee Convention.
“You cannot hope to be a credible champion of rule-based international order, as the Government aspires to be, and at the same time pick and choose which of those rules you yourself will continue to honour,” he said.
Lee Anderson, a former deputy chairman of the Tory party, has said the Archbishop of Canterbury should offer spare rooms in his Lambeth Palace to house illegal migrants.
Mr Anderson told GB News: “He’s got a big place just across the road ... I walk past that every day. It’s called Lambeth Palace. It’s got hundreds of empty rooms. We’re struggling for accommodation at the moment. Put them in there.”
