Sir Geoffrey Cox
MP for Torridge and Tavistock · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Once upon a time, it would not have been necessary for a Secretary of State for farming to come to the House to say that the primary purpose of farming was food production. The central recommendation of Minette Batters’ report was to make food security a national strategic priority.”
“I will give way to the hon. Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) first, if she can give me just two seconds. I want to develop this theme, because it is very important to me. There are some things that have to be above politics. If there are not, we have no society to defend.”
“Not just now. I say to the House, in all conscience, that jury trial is precious. Why? It is precious because it unites all parts of the political spectrum. It is precious because it allows the people of this country to be directly engaged in the adjudication of guilt or innocence in thousands of cases across the country.”
“No, I am not giving way. I am mindful of time and I must complete what I have to say. This is a time when not just this House but the judiciary and the courts are under attack. The unprecedented attacks upon the judiciary and the legal profession are deplorable. Institutional trust is under siege, and now is not the time— [ Interruption.”
“No, I am not giving way. Let me make that clear now. I want to finish in a moment. The reality is that jury trial is too precious a thing to lose. We are faced with a question of principle here.”
“I should declare an interest at the beginning. I am a member of the Bar—that is not uncommonly known—I still practise at the Bar, and I have the honour to be a criminal barrister and a member of the Criminal Bar Association. I have spent 44 years at the Bar.”
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“I beg to move, That this House has considered family farming in Devon. It is a great pleasure to have been able to secure a debate under your presidency, Sir Mark. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for attending. With exquisite timing, the Conservative party has managed to list an Opposition day motion in the main Chamber tomorrow on exactly the same subject as this debate. Although I welcome that, I also welcome the opportunity of having the Minister much more up close and personal than is normally possible in the main Chamber for what I hope will be a relatively civilised debate—we do not always manage that in the main Chamber, perhaps, although one would hope we would.”
“But what about the 46% of farms that are owned by a single owner? If, for example, someone’s spouse has already died, they cannot inherit the allowance from their deceased husband or wife. The 46% of single owners of farms will receive no double relief—only the £1 million. I say to the Minister that what is particularly wrong about this situation is—”
“That same land often sustains multiple families—the brothers, the sisters and the cousins, all of whom farm that land—and from that exiguous amount of £17,300, or £23,500 in an upland area, they all have to take their living, provide for their children, pay for their energy and so on. These farms are not wealthy; they are, as is so often said, asset-rich but income-poor. The Government say that the relief is doubled for a couple. However, bear in mind that a farm will have not just the land but other business assets, equipment and livestock, all of which require the business property relief to be deployed. And the business property relief, combined with the agricultural property relief, is now capped at £1 million. As I said, the Government say the relief is doubled for a couple.”
“Of course, all those measures are outweighed by far by the subject that tomorrow’s debate will no doubt cover: agricultural and business property relief. The Government’s figures on the policy have now been widely discredited. The £1 million cap is not only on agricultural property relief but on business property relief. Both reliefs are used when a farm is passed to the next generation. As agricultural land prices have increased, a 200-acre farm, let alone a 400-acre farm, will almost certainly have a capital value, on the land alone, of more than £2 million.”
“What we realise, and what those listening today have begun to realise, is that it is in the small as well as the large measures that the Government are revealing their visceral and real preferences and priorities. The small things include the reclassification of double-cab pick-up trucks. That might even have been missed in the Budget. Squirrelled away in the small print was a lancet aimed straight at hundreds of farming families in Devon, many of whom have a double-cab pick-up truck. Now, that is no longer deductible: it is not to be treated as a business expense simply because it has a back seat, when for years it has been so treated by the Revenue. The small measures reveal the real preferences and priorities of a Government. It is not the words, the rhetoric or the talk; it is what they do by which they are judged.”
“They see how the Prime Minister at COP29 committed himself to a climate change target—a perfectly reasonable thing, some may argue, but the Climate Change Committee has told him that in committing to that target he will need to reduce the consumption of meat and dairy products by 20% over the coming five years. These are the signs of the political weather, and so are the small measures—the small signs that, beyond the talk, indicate the revealed preferences and priorities of a Government. It is not about what the Prime Minister says when he stands at the podium and speaks to the National Farmers Union; we have already learned that we cannot trust that.”
“Some relief is available to those who desperately need it.” Because they—the farming families of whom I speak—will also be affected by the increases in employer national insurance contributions and the minimum wage, and by the various measures, some quite small, that the Budget took in connection with those who pursue family farming. In the meantime, like a slow and steady drumbeat gathering force, behind the ever more implausible rhetoric of support, they see and hear the concrete commitments of this Government. They witness the Government in action, not in words.”
“I saw him, in his characteristically civil and polite way, gently shake his head. Nothing would more alight the hopes of those I represent than if that gentle shake of the head meant something—meant that we were wrong to say that the capital grants had been ceased and meant that all those writing to me and colleagues, asking what to do now, have been living in an unnecessary nightmare. I implore the Minister, if that gentle shake of the head meant anything, to let us hear it now. Let us hear him boldly strike out and say, “The capital grants will be resumed. They will not be postponed or delayed to 2025.”
“It has been already announced that the instrument will cease to be used at the end of this Parliament. That sounds like prejudging; it does not sound like evidence-led political decision making. It sounds like an ideological decision, not an evidenced one, when even the chief vet accepts that the instrument has been a contributory factor in the downward trajectory of the disease. In my constituency, and I suspect in those of others in the Chamber, the instrument has unquestionably led to a dramatic fall in the incidence of the disease—a 55% reduction. I recall vividly that I could walk from one end of my constituency to the other on infected farms under restrictions. It is now quite impossible to do that, which is significant progress. There is a human impact of bovine TB.”
“In Torridge and Tavistock that control has led to a 55% reduction in herd breakdowns. The chief vet says that it has been a causative factor in the downward trajectory of the disease. I applaud the Minister for announcing the refreshment of the bovine eradication strategy, and for announcing that there will be no immediate cessation of that important instrument. It is an instrument that must be used judiciously, and only as part of a wider group of instruments designed to bear down on the disease, but it cannot be excluded. In the first five years of my election to this place I sat on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that wrote the report that set the scene for the policy that the coalition Government introduced. My worry is that the refresh will prejudge the outcome.”
“I pay tribute to my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the coalition Government, because it took moral and political courage finally in 2010 to agree, alongside the Conservatives, to introduce that single instrument that the Labour Government had declined to introduce for all those years. I remember bringing the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn) down to the village of Clawton on the borders of Cornwall and sitting him alongside 15 or 20 farmers to hear their experiences. Although he was, like this Minister, civil, urbane, courteous, mild, kind and polite as ever, he was implacable in his refusal to adopt the rational proposal being made to him by those farmers that targeted control of wildlife was necessary, and that in the end all wildlife must be controlled.”
“For years, we banged our head on the brick wall of policy made by a previous Labour Government to get people to understand that the wildlife reservoir must be controlled. It was one instrument among the many that were unquestionably needed, including biosecurity, the development of vaccination and all those instruments, but we could not arbitrarily exclude the instrument of controlling the wildlife. In the hills and fields of Devonshire I have watched badgers run between the legs of the cattle. One tiny, infinitesimal measurement of badger urine can create the bovine TB disease in cattle. It is impossible to prevent the infected wildlife reservoir in badgers, and for that matter in deer, from infecting the cattle, and it is widely understood by the veterinary community in Devonshire that wildlife is a vector in the disease.”
“There is no time for those people to plan, and that makes them feel—up and down the length of this country and throughout the towns and villages of Devon—that they may be the impediment to the next generation. The same holds for the dramatic and unexpected cuts in the delinked payments: there was no income assessment, no consultation—it was all sudden. It is those small details, as is so often the case, that reveal the real preferences and priorities of the Government. I want to talk about bovine tuberculosis. When I was first elected, that disease ran riot throughout the countryside of Devon. West Devon, Torridge, and parts of north Devon were some of the most densely infected areas in the country.”
“Older farmers’ health and wellbeing are seriously at risk as we come to see ourselves as an impediment to successfully passing on the farm to the future generation, preserved for their generation to cultivate, to nurture, and to develop. It is not so much the cap—although the cap is bad enough—as the complete failure of the Government to assess the impact on the basis of accurate figures. The Treasury figures are now widely discredited and different, as we know, from the Minister’s own Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is a complete failure to work out the impact it will have not only on businesses, but on people; a failure to consult them and to understand how these measures will impact the rural communities I have the precious honour of representing and speaking for this afternoon.”
“They are closed herds, some of them; animals prized for their pedigrees and their quality, and prize-winning at the local shows of which I have already spoken and to which I have drawn the Minister’s attention. But what she says next is the most compelling: she says, “At my age, I have very little time to plan. Even if I could give the farm away and survive the seven years that were necessary, I can’t, because I still need to retain a modest income from the business because my pension provision itself is modest. Taking out life insurance at the age of 86? Well, that is a non-starter. These changes and the implications for my family greatly worry me.” That is an understatement.”
“One can see the cows going round on the carousel—I am sure the Minister has seen them, but I can show him these carousels in my constituency. The cows come in, they get on to the carousel, they go round, they come off the other side and they are milked. Those automated parlours are worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. All that would need to be offset against business property relief, which has now been capped not only for the value of those buildings and those business assets, but for the land, which is 400 acres. To sell 20% of the herd to pay inheritance tax will, as my constituent suggests, not only severely deplete the profitability of a business that already operates on the wafer-thin margins of which we have spoken today, but cripple herds that have sometimes had lavished upon them 100 years of husbandry.”
“I was dealing with the impact the changes agricultural property and business property relief will have on farming families, although that will be debated in greater and finer detail tomorrow. Just this morning I was written to by a farmer in my constituency. She lives in Sheepwash in Torridge in Devon. I hope she will forgive me for mentioning her age, because she is 86. She has a dairy farm, milking 250 cows. As she says herself, the cows may well be worth £400,000, the young stock another £250,000, machinery perhaps £250,000 and the farm buildings—into which investment, toil and effort have been poured by those who have worked that farm for generations—worth perhaps £1 million in themselves. The farm may have a dairy parlour. It may be automated. It may well be able to milk 250 cows, or these days even more.”
“I have to say he will have a hard job and an uphill battle to persuade them after the inheritance tax relief and the other measures of which I have spoken, but if anybody in this Government can do it, it is the Minister. I hope he will, and I wish him success in doing so.”
“I invite him to come to Tavistock for the next Dartmoor forum, where we have several hundred attending: the NFU, Devon Wildlife Trust and all the environmental groups will come. It is an important moment when the actors, the players and those involved on Dartmoor can see how this Government are as engaged as the last Government were in finding solutions to the uplands problem on the moor. I conclude with this plea: if it was not an intentional weather creation, leading farmers up and down the country and throughout Devon to believe that this Government have no interest, no regard and no care and are in fact callous and indifferent to their welfare and fate, it is up to the Minister today and henceforth to change that weather by sending the correct signals.”
“I will indeed, Sir Mark. We do not need pyres 200 feet tall to see the invisible toll of carnage that cattle slaughter after bovine TB entails. I urge the Minister to remain open minded. Finally, I come to the Fursdon review. I know the Minister understands that none of my remarks are intended to be personal—on the contrary; he is a reasonable interlocutor with whom it is always a pleasure to deal, and who has always consulted on matters of constituency and other regional importance. The Fursdon review is one such matter. I urge him to implement its recommendations in full. The review was superbly conducted and has been an extraordinarily valuable exercise in how light can be brought to difficult situations. I applaud the appointment of the chairman of the Dartmoor Land Use Management Group and thank the Minister for that—that is good.”
“The figures that the Treasury published simply deal with the use of agricultural property relief. What they do not show is how many farms had already used their business property relief before needing to rely on agricultural property relief. They do not take into account the fact that it is not just APR, but BPR, being capped.”
“I have been told that vaccination is just a few years away every time I have had a debate of this type. It would be interesting to know how far away the Minister thinks the vaccination is, and has he solved the problems of exporting the milk and the produce, once it has been vaccinated, to our markets abroad? I ask because of course it is difficult to determine whether something detected is the vaccine or the disease, and it is not clear that our markets would be available. Those problems have to be resolved by him, and I am very happy to work with him to do that. Finally, on the question of the landscape management unit in the Fursdon review, may I urge the Minister to recall that what is critical—”
“Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) will debate it forcefully, and the Minister will no doubt be relieved to be sitting by the side of Treasury Ministers, who are going to have to take the rap for the mess that they have made. I would like to work with the Minister on bovine TB. The disease affects my constituency, and the constituencies of all of us in Devonshire, profoundly. We do not want to go back in history. I recall that history too well. I recall the foot and mouth pyres, but also, as I have said, the silent and invisible carnage with the slaughter of cattle as a result of bovine TB, and the restrictions on dairy farms, on livestock grazing farms. Those are cruel—cruel not only to the animals but to the people. We need together to find a solution.”
“The 86-year-old lady, living in Sheepwash, who now sees herself as an impediment to the passage of her ancient farm to her own children and grandchildren is a human example of the impact, and she is not going to be comforted by the answer, “Well, only 27% of farms will be affected.” She says, “What about me?” Can we afford to lose, even on the Treasury figures, 2,500 farms over this Parliament? Even on the minuscule figure that the Treasury takes into account, it is still 2,500 farms the length and breadth of England that will be lost—500 a year. I say we cannot afford it. We will debate this tomorrow. I know that my hon.”
“That is the problem: we all sense that this was driven by the Treasury, tin-eared—completely deaf to the real needs of the farming world and community. I suspect that even after the relatively short time the Minister has been in office—he did serve in opposition, and I know he was an attentive, listening figure in that time—even he must understand that this has caused a restiveness throughout the community, and not just a restiveness, but a despair.”
“Thank you, Sir Mark; I can be quite concise. May I, through you, thank the Minister for, as ever, the polite, civil and gentle way in which he treats the inevitable criticism coming from the Opposition side of the Chamber? Some of it is justified, and no doubt some, he thinks, is unjustified. I have to say I found his responses on the inheritance tax changes pretty thin, but no doubt we will hear tomorrow from the Treasury Ministers as they stand up for themselves on a decision on which, from his silence, we can make a deduction. The hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) asked the very pertinent question whether DEFRA was consulted, and the answer that came back was not yes; it was, “We are one Government.” If I have ever heard a piece of prevarication elegantly executed in this Chamber, that was it.”
“Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges HM Government to reallocate funds to Devon County Council to facilitate a comprehensive scheme of road improvements, including to improve the condition of unclassified or classified unnumbered roads which are vital for rural communities in Torridge and West Devon, as well as to prevent further, avoidable disrepair. And your petitioners remain, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c. ] [P002956]”
“And your petitioners remain, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.” Following is the full text of the petition: [ The humble petition of the people of Torridge and West Devon, Sheweth, that Devon has the largest road network of any county, encompassing more than 8,000 miles; further that more than 5.77 billion vehicle miles were travelled on Devon’s road network in 2022; further that many of these roads are unclassified or classified unnumbered and while acknowledging the welcome additional one-off grants of an extra £27 million in 2020/21 and of £9.4 million allocated to Devon County Council in the Spring Budget (2023); notes that the established funding model does not keep pace with the requirements of Torridge and West Devon’s road network and that some of its roads, particularly the unclassified and classified unnumbered roads serving market towns and villages, after recent severe winters and rains, are in a state of dilapidation.”
“The petition states: “Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges HM Government to reallocate funds to Devon County Council to facilitate a comprehensive scheme of road improvements, including to improve the condition of unclassified or classified unnumbered roads which are vital for rural communities in Torridge and West Devon, as well as to prevent further, avoidable disrepair.”
“I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of some 4,000 of my constituents concerning the road network in Torridge and West Devon. Devon has the largest road network of any county at 8,000 miles. It has many unclassified and unnumbered roads serving isolated communities. While the substantial sums provided in recent Budgets are welcome, the patchwork repair of our roads is not the answer. The petitioners seek a predictable provision over the next five years to enable a planned scheme of comprehensive road repairs.”
“Where there is a fairly minor case of worrying, one would not expect a disqualification, but in a really grave case—such as that of the Dawe family, whom I have the privilege of representing—a court may take a thoroughly different view. With that—I say again that this is meant not in a critical spirit but in a constructive one—I congratulate my right hon. Friend again. This is an extraordinarily valuable set of provisions that has been widely welcomed and I hope that we can consider tightening them further in the Bill’s journey through the House.”
“That is an unlimited fine and that is good, but the repeated worrying of sheep or worrying of any livestock is not, many would say, sufficiently visited with adequate punishment by a fine alone. I commend that approach to the Minister, and if I am wrong about that or the policy of the Government is not to adopt it, we need at least to consider when section 3 should be used. Finally, we need to consider the question of disqualification and whether or not this offence should be added to the list of offences under the Animal Welfare Act that make an owner eligible for disqualification. The court, of course, would have discretion; all the usual balancing factors that are relevant under that Act would apply.”
“The two points that I recommend to the Minister, then—it may be that those assisting him can say that my fairly preliminary inspection of the laws in this field is wrong, and I can be reassured—are twofold. First, we need coherent guidance as to the way police investigate and prosecution prosecute, as to the balance to be struck and the considerations to be thought through, and as to the application of either a section 3 Dangerous Dogs Act offence or an offence of worrying sheep or attacking livestock, of the kind my right hon. Friend is dealing with. Secondly, we need to consider whether the offences, even those she is amending, are sufficient for this purpose. A repeat offender will be fined under level 5.”
“I strongly submit to the Minister, for future consideration, perhaps in this Bill, that this offence ought to be added to section 34 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which lists the offences that gives to a court the power to disqualify a person from dog ownership. It may be that there is a lacuna, and under the Dangerous Dogs Act the normal remedy in those circumstances would be the destruction of the animal, but if the court decides that the animal should not be destroyed, surely some attention should be given to whether an owner with a dog so dangerously out of control—or even a dog that worries livestock, whether once or repeatedly—should not be allowed to own a dog until further order.”
“The irresponsibility of an owner who allows their dogs to roam free and to cause damage of that appalling character is not reflected by a fine of a few hundred pounds. Now, you may say to me, Mrs Latham, that perhaps in those circumstances an offence under section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act should be considered, and I would agree, but what we need is a coherent set of guidelines that sets out when the various offences in the hierarchy that exists should be considered by both police and the Crown Prosecution Service. The second point that I wish to make is an allied point. It is astonishing that neither the Dangerous Dogs Act nor, certainly, the 1953 Act permits the court to disqualify an owner from owning a dog.”
“An offence with a £1,000 maximum fine will generally be visited not with the maximum by a magistrates court but by a fine potentially of just a few hundred pounds—in other words, the cost of perhaps a few parking tickets—yet the impact, suffering and mischief that attacks by dogs on livestock cause to farmers and farming families are severe, and wholly out of proportion to a fine of a few hundred pounds. My right hon. Friend will know—because I have discussed it with her—that just a few weeks ago the Dawe family, who are neighbours and constituents of mine, were subjected to an extraordinary overnight attack in which no fewer than 27 lambing ewes and lambs were killed—their faces ripped off and their bellies torn open. Many of them had to be put down when, in the morning light, that appalling scene of carnage was discovered.”
“We have, then, the offence in section 3 and the offences under the 1953 Act. What we do not have is coherence in the guidelines for prosecution and enforcement between when the Dangerous Dogs Act can be used and when the offence is of attacks on, or worrying, livestock. Having served as a Law Officer, I think there may well be a case for the re-publication of new guidelines on enforcement and prosecution, but the reason why I draw attention to the matter is that, even with the changes that my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is introducing to the penalty provisions, it seems to me that they are extraordinarily light for the top end of this type of offending.”
“I hope we can give some subsequent attention to my first concern about the Bill—the Minister may be able to help me by answering some of my questions or by reflecting on changes that could be introduced in subsequent stages—which is that at the moment several pieces of legislation could apply to the mischief at which this Bill is aimed. We have the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953, which this measure amends, but we also have the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Section 3 of the 1991 Act makes it an offence to be the owner of a dog that is dangerously out of control, and the guidelines that the Crown Prosecution Service published on that offence suggest that a dog that is causing serious injury to other animals, including livestock, is potentially evincing evidence of being dangerously out of control.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. I should make a declaration of interest: I own land on which livestock is kept. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal on doing an enormous service for livestock farming and those engaged in it not only through this valuable Bill but during her service as Secretary of State. Throughout her time in office, she took valuable steps towards enhancing the livelihoods of those whom I represent in my constituency. Her work is being carried on by the current Secretary of State. I shall address just one or two elements of the Bill not in a critical spirit but in, I hope, a constructive one.”
“On disqualification, will the Minister go back to the Department and say to his officials that we ought to look at whether committing an offence under the 1953 Act should make someone eligible for disqualification from dog ownership? It would be a simple amendment that could be introduced in this private Member’s Bill, and I sense that there is widespread support for the proposal. If there is a good reason not to do it, the Committee and the House should of course listen to that, but I noticed that he was not going to deal with it—I hope he will forgive me; I may have been premature.”
“The Dangerous Dogs Act does permit disqualification, so although the Animal Welfare Act considers the welfare of an animal, the Dangerous Dogs Act aims at a different mischief. There seems to be no reason why livestock worrying offences should not be included under the same principle as the Dangerous Dogs Act.”
“Just five years ago, the gates of Appledore shipyard closed. It was a picture of dereliction; its workforce dispersed to the four winds. But now it has experienced a glorious revival. It has several hundred employees and 45 apprentices, having been taken over by Harland & Wolff. A similar picture of prosperity and thriving is taking place in Belfast today. May we have a debate on the revival of English shipbuilding and shipbuilding in Northern Ireland, which has been presided over by this Government’s maritime shipbuilding strategy?”
“How does the emphasis about which the Minister is talking square with the sustainable farming incentive activities? They arouse considerable concern in the farming community that it would almost be a better and more paying proposition for them to give up farming altogether under the SFI scheme. Is my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), who intervened on the Minister a while ago, not right to say that what we have to do through the SFI is start to consider how we encourage people to produce food and not encourage people not to produce it?”
“Is there a fundamental difference between the Government deeming Rwanda safe and the Labour Government, as they did in 2004, deeming a whole list of countries safe in precisely the same way and with precisely the same legislative technique?”
“In defending the Bill, which I will attempt, one has to reckon with those who think that it goes too far, or may go too far, and with those who think it goes not far enough. Let me first address those who think that it goes too far, of whom the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) is an example. The Bill is criticised on the basis that it deems Rwanda to be safe. It is said that that is an illegitimate legal technique. It is said that it perpetuates, or perpetrates, a fiction in law. That is precisely the same fiction that the Labour Government adopted in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004.”
“If that longstop is in place, if the treaty is binding in Rwandan law and if it is binding, as it is, in international law, then I would suggest that there is simply no credible risk of refoulement if treaties and legal rules mean anything in the United Kingdom and in Rwanda. If the risk of refoulement has been removed, then there is nothing inappropriate in this House determining, as the Labour Government did in 2004, that Rwanda is safe for the purposes of refoulement. So I say to the House that this is appropriate, and it is a judgment that we can make as a House to take the step that we are now taking.”
“Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has rightly analysed the situation of international law. In this country we have a dualist jurisdiction where treaties are not self-executing, but in Rwanda the treaty is self-executing, so it will be binding on the Rwandan Government not only as a matter of international law, but as a matter of their own law. That treaty contains a range of important safeguards, including, as a longstop, the fact that no individual removed to Rwanda from this country can be removed to a third country without the consent of the United Kingdom.”
“We are saying that Parliament, legitimately weighing the evidence, has concluded that Rwanda will not engage in the refoulement of those sent to it. That is something the courts have already accepted. It is something that it is open to this House to do, and it is something that, in my judgment, it is perfectly legitimate for Parliament to undertake. It would be different if it were to reverse a decision against an individual. But even if I am wrong about that, and even if as a matter of constitutional convention it were undesirable for this House to reverse the effect on a question of principle—namely, whether Rwanda is safe for the purposes of refoulement—the facts have changed. There is now a binding treaty, and it is binding not only in international law but in domestic Rwandan law. My hon.”
“It is said that for this House to overrule the decision of the Supreme Court in such an individual case is constitutionally undesirable and contrary to fundamental constitutional principle. I do not agree with that analysis. First, it is open to this Parliament at any point to take steps to reverse the effect of a judicial ruling—that is the consequence of parliamentary supremacy. It is clear that Parliament should be restrained in doing so in cases, for example, where individual rights in a case to reverse a determination made in favour of an individual would plainly be contrary to fundamental constitutional principle, but that is not what we are doing here. We are seeking to do precisely what the Labour Government did in 2004.”
“Yes, it is. It was changed two or three years later, but in the Nasseri case before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, their lordships upheld, as a matter of law, the deeming of countries to be safe and within the law. Indeed, they went on to say—Lord Hoffmann being one of them, I think—that while Parliament deemed it such, there were plainly risks if the Home Office did not keep an eye on the state and conditions in the countries that were thus deemed, but otherwise it complied with the law and the courts would respect Parliament’s decision. What is being said in this case is that a Supreme Court decision has already held Rwanda not to be a safe country for the purposes of the guarantee against refoulement.”