Labour says UK should take up Rwandan president on offer to return money spent on deportation scheme – UK politics live | Politics

Prospect, a union representing civil servants, has condemned the new guidance being issued to officials about injunctions from the European court of human rights. (See 4.45pm.) Garry Graham, the union’s deputy general secretary, said:

This in effect could put civil servants in an impossible position where the choice is potentially between breaking international law, disobeying the instructions of a minister (and facing potential disciplinary action) or resigning.

This is a problem of the governments own making and they should not be putting civil servants in this invidious position.

If the Rwanda bill passes the Commons tonight, it will then go to the House of Lords where there is more chance of it being amended, partly because the government does not have a majority there and partly because the chamber is full of lawyers who take safeguarding rights particularly seriously.

This afternoon the Lords international agreements committee has published its verdict on the government’s new treaty with Rwanda which is the basis for the declaration in the bill that Rwanda is a safe country for refugees, and it is sceptical. The committee says the government should delay ratifying the treaty with Rwanda until it is satisfied that Rwanda has addressed the problems with its asylum system highlighted by the supreme court.

The report says:

On paper the Rwanda treaty improves the protections previously set out in the memorandum of understanding [the original basis of the UK’s deal with Rwanda, with less legal standing than a treaty], but there are a significant number of legal and practical steps which need to be taken before the protections could be deemed operational such that they might make a difference to the assessment reached by the supreme court. Evidence that these arrangements have bedded down in practice is also needed. In short, the treaty is unlikely to change the position in Rwanda in the short to medium term.

We recommend that the treaty is not ratified until parliament is satisfied that the protections it provides have been fully implemented since parliament is being asked to make a judgment, based on the treaty, about whether Rwanda is safe. The government should submit further information to parliament to confirm that all the necessary legal and practical steps and training which underpin the protections provided in the treaty have been put in place, and then allow for a further debate before proceeding to ratification.

In paragraph 45 of its report, the committee identifies 10 improvements Rwanda is supposed to be making under the treaty and it says it will “take time” for them to happen. They include: “a new asylum law in Rwanda; a system for ensuring that non-refoulement does not take place; a process for submitting individual complaints to the monitoring committee; training for international judges in Rwandan law and practice; and training for Rwandan officials dealing with asylum applicants.”

The committee says:

It is clear from this that significant legal and practical steps have to be taken before the assurances provided in the Rwanda Treaty can be fully implemented. The government has provided no indication of the timeframe for the completion of these steps, but plainly it will take some time.

The government has announced that, if the Rwanda bill is passed, it will scrap guidance to civil servants saying they must always obey injunctions from the European court of human rights (rule 39 orders) blocking deportations.

Current Home Office advice to officials tells them: “Where you have been notified that a R39 indication has been made you must defer removal immediately.”

Instead new guidance will be issued saying that in future, if a rule 39 order is issued, officials must refer the matter for a ministerial decision immediately, so the minister can decide whether or not the deportation goes ahead.

Sir Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, has revealed the new policy in a letter published today. He was responding to a separate letter from Darren Tierney, head of propriety at the Cabinet Office, who has produced draft guidance on this topic for all civil servants. The draft guidance says:

As a matter of UK law, the decision as to whether to comply with a rule 39 indication is a decision for a minister of the crown. Parliament has legislated to grant ministers this discretion. The implications of such a decision in respect of the UK’s international obligations are a matter for ministers. In the event that the minister, having received policy, operational and legal advice on the specific facts of that case, decides not to comply with a rule 39 indication, it is the responsibility of civil servants – operating under the civil service code – to implement that decision. This applies to all civil servants.

This guidance will be issued if the Rwanda bill becomes law.

This wording skirts over the issue of whether it would be lawful for a minister to ignore a rule 39 order. In the Commons this afternoon Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, said the attorney general’s view was that ignoring the Strasbourg court like this would be unlawful. (See 1.17pm.)

The Labour MP Sir Tony Lloyd has died. His family has issued this statement.

And Keir Starmer has issued this tribute.

Last week Lloyd, 73, issued a statement saying he was ill with an aggressive and untreatable form of leukaemia.

His death will trigger a byelection in Rochdale, where Lloyd had a majority of 9,668 at the last election.

Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, said today that if the UK scrapped the Rwanda scheme, Rwanda would return the money it has received to fund it.

In response, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the UK should grab the offer quickly. In a statement she said:

If Rwanda says we can have the money back from this failing scheme, Rishi Sunak should seize the chance, instead of dragging out this Tory asylum chaos any longer. We need proper grip not more of this failing gimmick.

The taxpayer is being hit for more than £400m for a scheme that is only likely to cover 1% of those arriving. That money could go instead into strengthening our border security, including Labour’s plan to crackdown on the criminal smuggler gangs with cross-border law enforcement and establish a major new returns unit.

But the Rwandan government seems to be having second thoughts. In a clarification of Kagame’s comment, Yolande Makolo, the Rwandan government’s spokesperson, said they would consider a future UK request for a refund, but declined to say how much of the UK’s cash has been spent so far. She said:

Under the terms of the agreement, Rwanda has no obligation to return any of the funds paid. However, if no migrants come to Rwanda under the scheme, and the UK government wishes to request a refund of the portion of the funding allocated to support the migrants, we will consider this request.

To talk about figures at this point is premature, as we are still awaiting the conclusion of the UK legislative process and remain committed to making the partnership work.

Back in the Commons, Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is speaking. Since being sacked, she has often strongly criticised the government’s policy on immigration and small boats.

She says the bill as drafted will lead to a re-run of what happened in the summer of 2022 when a plane was blocked from leaving for Rwanda by an injunction from the European court of human rights.

She says these injunctions were not part of the original European convention of human rights. They were invented by the court, as part of the process by which it has expanded its remit.

And she says Labour’s Human Rights Act has made the situation worse. It has encouraged a rights culture, and decisions by the government has been undermined by an activist legal industry.

As an example, she cites the case of a Nigerian national sentenced in 2016 to four years in jail for serious offences, including battery and assault. But an attempt to deport him was blocked on the grounds that he would face serious problems integrating in Nigeria, and those concerns outweighed the public interest in deportation, Braverman says.

She cites another case where a drug dealer was not deported because he would lose ongoing access to medical treatment he was receiving.

And she claims that another case has established that, if the government wants to deport someone, it has to show that their life will not be shortened by the removal of their access to NHS facilities.

As Braverman condemns the ECHR as a “foreign court”, Labour’s Stella Creasy asks, if the ECHR is a foreign court, what is Nato?

Braverman claims that’s “elementary politics”. She says the court does not have the UK’s interests at heart.

Patrick Grady from the SNP follows Braverman and he starts by telling MPs they have seen “the first act of the next Conservative leadership contest”.

David Cameron has rejected suggestions that the controversy about the Rwanda bill is embarrassing for the UK on the world stage.

When this was put to him at a panel at Davos, the foreign secretary replied: “Quite the contrary.”

He said countries around the world were having to find a way of dealing with illegal migration and that, although Britain’s approach was “quite unorthodox in some ways”, out-of-the-box thinking like this was necessary to break the model of this “appalling people smuggling”.

Graeme Wearden has more on this here on his business live blog.