Stephen Kinnock
MP for Aberafan Maesteg · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the shadow Secretary of State for her kind words and look forward to our exchanges across the Dispatch Box. I am ready to engage with her on getting the maximum benefits for the people of Wales.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady and look forward to working with her. My understanding is that there were challenges around the helicopter capability. Decisions were taken by Natural Resources Wales some time ago to change the way that the tendering for helicopter capability works. We certainly need to look at that.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. Like him, I pay tribute to all those involved in the collective and heroic response to the wildfires.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. Many of the ideas coming forward for devolving power right across our United Kingdom, beyond Cardiff Bay and Holyrood, are very exciting, and I look forward to exploring them with her.”
“Just to be clear, this is not about staying out of the issue; it is about respecting the devolution settlement, but being prepared to work constructively where we can in partnership with the Welsh Government. The hon.”
“I know about and welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s strong connections to Wales. I recognise the connectivity benefits that WSMR’s proposal could deliver, particularly for passengers in Wales and the west midlands.”
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“It is for the simple reason that we want to put in the Bill an articulation of what has already been said by Ministers from the Dispatch Box. We feel that it is extremely important to underline this country’s commitment to the rule of law. The hon. Gentleman mentions the Leader of the Opposition; as an eminent lawyer himself, there are few who are more committed to the rule of law than he. If there is a parallel universe in which the Rwandan Government are able to process asylum claims in a safe and competent manner, surely it makes sense to verify that point and the measures that are set out in the Rwanda treaty, and to verify that they have been fully implemented, and for the Government’s hand-picked monitoring committee to establish that that is the case.”
“Under successive Conservative Governments since 2010, returns of failed asylum seekers have collapsed by 44%, and returns of foreign national offenders have fallen by almost 30% over the same period. For all the Government’s tough talk, only 2% of those arriving on small boats since 2018 have been returned anywhere, yet Ministers are still resisting Labour’s plan for a new returns and enforcement unit to ensure the swift removal of those with no right to be here. Meanwhile, over the weekend, more people crossed the channel in small boats than will be covered in the entire first year of the Government’s failing Rwanda scheme. Will the Minister stop the headline-chasing gimmicks and instead commit to setting out his plan for the 99% of people currently stuck in the asylum system who will never be sent to Rwanda?”
“Speaking of the Prime Minister, I noticed that during the Easter recess, he found time to offer his services as a financial adviser to small businesses via Zoom. I do not know about you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have concerns about a guy who is happy to pump billions of pounds into a failing fiasco like this Rwanda scheme offering his services as a financial adviser to unsuspecting members of the public. Let us hope that the Financial Conduct Authority will intervene as a matter of urgency.”
“Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), who is not in his place, got the ball rolling during our last debate on the Bill by pointing out that £2 million will get someone five trips to outer space on the Virgin Galactic spacecraft—Madam Deputy Speaker, you look impressed, and suitably so. I have calculated that someone could live for three decades on one of the world’s most expensive cruise liners. They could charter, for a year, the Lady M yacht, which is, of course, the yacht that belongs to the “noble” Baroness Mone—it is her vessel of choice, as some Government Members may be aware—or they could even fly the Prime Minister’s favoured helicopter to Australia and back.”
“Analysis conducted by the National Audit Office has revealed that if the Government manage to send 300 asylum seekers to Rwanda, which is just 0.5% of the 60,000 people earmarked for the scheme, it will cost the British taxpayer a truly staggering £2m per person. It is crystal clear that the scheme is doomed to fail on its own terms because people who are prepared to risk life and limb crossing continents will not be deterred by a 0.5% chance of being sent to Rwanda. The mind-boggling costs of the scheme are quite difficult to grasp, so I have done a bit of homework—a bit of research into what else we could get for £2 million. My hon.”
“We have had two years of headline-chasing gimmicks; two years of pursuing a policy that is fundamentally unworkable, unaffordable and unlawful; two years of flogging this dead horse. I am an inveterate optimist, so I truly believe that one day Government Members will come to understand that hard graft and common sense are always more effective than the sugar rush of a tabloid front page, and they will come to accept that they should have adopted Labour’s comprehensive plan to restore order to our border by redirecting the vast amounts of money set aside for the Rwandan Government into a new cross-border police unit, and a new security partnership with Europol to smash the criminal gangs upstream.”
“It is just over two years to the day since the Rwanda scheme was first announced from the Government Dispatch Box, so it would be remiss of us not to take stock of progress to date. Well, hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money have been sent to the Rwandan Government; civil servants, courts, parliamentarians and journalists have spent countless hours, days and weeks discussing and writing about the scheme; and not one, not two, but three Home Secretaries have flown down to Kigali. But apart from that, there is not a great deal to report. The boats have kept coming, the backlog has kept growing, and the people smugglers are still laughing all the way to the bank.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I always enjoy taking interventions from a fellow Welshman, but I feel that the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) was well and truly put in his place by your riposte.”
“They warn that if this exemption is not granted, it will do “grave damage to our ability to recruit local allies in future military operations”, and explain that they have “seen first-hand the enormous courage and dedication shown by those who have fought alongside our Armed Forces and served British interests abroad, often at huge personal risk, and we take personally Britain’s obligation to honour the debt we owe to that cohort.” Those are powerful words indeed. I urge Government Members to join us in supporting Lords amendment 10B, which seeks to prevent that travesty.”
“We owe a debt of honour to the Afghans who were loyal to Britain and put their life on the line, and of course, our moral duty is most strongly felt by British armed forces personnel who worked alongside them. In fact, this weekend, 13 senior military figures signed a letter to The Sunday Telegraph warning that “‘any brave men and women who have fought alongside our armed forces or served the UK Government overseas’ must be exempt from removal to Rwanda.” The signatories included former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, a former Secretary-General of NATO and a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe.”
“We have spoken a lot about the unworkability and unaffordability of this policy, but we should also talk about the unethical and frankly un-British nature of deporting halfway across the world to Rwanda those Afghans who have supported Britain’s defence and diplomatic efforts. That is not Operation Warm Welcome; it is operation cold shoulder. We should have seen it coming, given that for an entire year the Prime Minister halted flights from neighbouring Pakistan for Afghans who had been granted resettlement rights in the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, and restarted them only when the Pakistani Government threatened to send those Afghans back across the border to meet their fate at the hands of the Taliban.”
“I am sure that those on the Government Benches would be delighted to oblige. Perhaps we could also legislate to say that the sky is green and the grass is blue, or that the Welsh rugby team actually won the last Six Nations—I would love to pass a law to secure that objective. Let us be clear: not one of the amendments before us prevents flights to Rwanda taking off. On the contrary, they simply seek to put in the Bill what Ministers have previously promised—namely, they would ensure that the Bill was lawful, that the Government would protect the most vulnerable, and that we would stand by those brave Afghans who supported military efforts. Let me address each amendment directly. I will focus first on Lords amendment 10B, in the name of the noble Lord Browne.”
“A number of people who served the British defence, development and diplomatic effort have been identified for resettlement, so they should be resettled in the United Kingdom. Let us get that bit of the scheme unblocked before we get into speculation about the quantum. The key point is that they have already been accepted into the resettlement programmes, but are being left high and dry in Pakistan.”
“It should go without saying that modern slavery victims should not be sent to Rwanda, and we are disappointed that the Government’s amendment (a) in lieu is a profoundly unserious attempt to reassure the House—not least because we have been here before and know that such promised reports are rarely worth the paper they are written on.”
“My hon. Friend is right that so many practical, pragmatic and sensible measures could be taken to deal with the crisis in the channel—the Tory small boats chaos—but instead of focusing on those sensible and pragmatic measures, we are dealing with this white elephant of a programme that will never get anywhere and is costing millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and absorbing huge amounts of our time. I absolutely agree with him on that. Lords amendment 9, in the name of the noble Baroness Butler-Sloss, is also based on a moral imperative, as it would prevent the removal of potential victims of modern slavery to Rwanda until the individual’s process under the national referral mechanism is complete.”
“We need Labour’s plans for faster processing, the end of hotel use and the removal of people who have no right to stay in the UK, and we need a Labour Government to deliver a firm, fair and well-managed asylum system that works for Britain.”
“Despite their misleading boasts about progress, the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), admitted today that there are still almost 300 asylum hotels in operation. They are returning 44% fewer failed asylum seekers compared with 2010, when the last Labour Government left office, and 27% fewer foreign criminals. The number of small boat crossings has gone up again year on year—January to March figures—and the Government have no plan for the 99% who cannot be sent to Rwanda. We need Labour’s plans to smash the criminal smuggler gangs, save lives in the channel and strengthen our border security.”
“Of course, the amendment are no more than an exercise in damage limitation; the fundamental problem is that this hare-brained Rwanda policy is breaking all records for being the most unworkable and worst value for money policy in the history of the Home Office. But there is an alternative. In addition to our policy to go after the criminal smuggler gangs, we will deliver our backlog clearance plan to get asylum seekers out of expensive asylum hotels by surging decision makers and caseworkers to the Home Office, and by creating a new returns and enforcement unit with 1,000 dedicated staff focused on the faster removal of those with no right to be here, including failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals. The Government are failing on all fronts.”
“The Government claim that the measures in the treaty address concerns in the Supreme Court’s recent unanimous ruling, so there is absolutely no reason for Ministers to refuse to accept Lord Hope’s amendments. Finally, Lords amendment 6B, in the name of the noble Baroness Chakrabarti, allows Ministers, officials and courts to consider whether Rwanda is safe on a case-by-case basis. Given that the Government have accepted that some appeals will be allowed, we see no reason for them to reject this amendment. I hope that colleagues from across the House will join Labour in voting for all the amendments.”
“There is a clear choice between the common sense, hard graft and positive international co-operation set out in Labour’s plan to deal with this issue, and the headline-chasing gimmicks and empty gestures that are symbolised by the Rwanda policy. Politics is about choices; the Government have taken their choice and we have taken ours. In that spirit, Lords amendment 1B is a Labour Front-Bench amendment that places a responsibility on the Government to have due regard for its current obligations under domestic and international law. Lords amendments 3B and 3C, in the name of the noble Lord Hope, together state that Rwanda may be considered a safe country only if and when the measures set out in the Rwanda treaty have been fully implemented and the monitoring committee has established that that is the case.”
“Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that that is a matter of the highest public interest and that sunlight is the best form of disinfectant, and therefore the FCDO should comply with those FOI requests as a matter of urgency?”
“In January 2023, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton—prior to his appointment as Foreign Secretary, of course—went to Sri Lanka to drum up investment for Port City Colombo, which is a belt and road project launched by President Xi, which many believe will become a military base for the Chinese navy. Following Lord Cameron’s appointment as Foreign Secretary, many freedom of information requests have been submitted to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to try to shed some light on his visit to Sri Lanka, including who he met and what sort of conversations took place, but to date not a single one of those FOI requests has been complied with by the FCDO.”
“I rise to speak in favour of all 10 of the Lords amendments that are before us today. They each serve to make this shambolic mess of a Bill marginally less absurd and, as I will come to in a second, they would serve only to put in statute what Ministers have promised from the Dispatch Box. Not one of the amendments is designed to prevent the departure of flights to Rwanda, as the Prime Minister has repeatedly and wrongly implied. We all want to end the Tory small boats chaos, and I am proud that the Labour party has consistently put forward a smart, pragmatic and sensible plan to do so, starting by going after the criminal smuggler gangs at source through a new cross-border police unit and a new security partnership with Europol. However, this Bill and the treaty that accompanies it will not contribute in any way to achieving that aim.”
“Indeed, this profoundly dismissive attitude has manifested itself in the way in which the Government have point blank refused to engage with the Lords amendments. They have rejected every one of them, rather than seeking to use them and see them as a basis for negotiation and compromise.”
“The chaos must end, and this Government are clearly unable to restore order at the border, so it is time for them to get out of the way so that Labour can get the job done. Before I get into the substance of the amendments, I would like to pay tribute to the noble Members of the other place, who tabled them. In so doing, they were fulfilling their constitutional, democratic and patriotic duty by scrutinising and seeking to amend the Bill, just as they would with any other piece of legislation that comes before them. They have not been intimidated or sidetracked by the Prime Minister’s mistaken assertion that the Bill should have some kind of special status or treatment, which would somehow allow Ministers to railroad it through Parliament and to drive a coach and horses through Britain’s long-standing democratic conventions.”
“We will eradicate the activity of the criminal smuggler gangs by having a proper security partnership with our European partners and allies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that his party has spent the last eight years trashing and destroying our relationships with our European partners and allies. What we would have with a Labour Government is a basis of trust to get the results that we need to see for the British people—that is what sovereignty is all about. The entire Rwanda debacle has absorbed a vast amount of time, energy and money that should instead have been focused on taking back control of our border security from the criminal gangs who trade in human misery. Let us not forget that more than 100,000 asylum seekers have crossed in small boats since 2020, with 40,000 arriving on this Prime Minister’s watch alone.”
“I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the Supreme Court—the highest court of our land —has ruled unanimously and in no uncertain terms that Rwanda is not a safe country to which to send asylum seekers. I know that he is very taken with parliamentary sovereignty, and that is very important, but parliamentary sovereignty must be based on having due regard to the findings of our judiciary. It is to be exercised with caution and moderation, which is why it is so important that our colleagues in the other place have played their role.”
“Let that sink in for a moment—£2 million to send just one asylum seeker from the UK to Rwanda, and then another £182,000 per person on top of that. In comparison, processing an asylum seeker in the UK costs just £21,000.”
“Indeed, as I turn to address the details of the amendments, it is important to point out that since the Bill was last debated in this place, even more evidence of the astonishing unaffordability of the scheme has come to light. This failing scheme was already costing the British taxpayer almost £400 million, even though not a single asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda, but every new detail is more astounding than the last. We recently learned that the first 300 asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda would cost the British taxpayer an extra £200 million, earning an invoice of £570 million from the Rwandan Government for just 1% of the 30,000 asylum seekers who crossed in small boats last year. That is almost £2 million per asylum seeker.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but at the end of the day, we cannot legislate to turn dogs into cats. We cannot legislate for the sky to be green and the grass to be blue. That is a basic tenet of the respect with which our institutions should be treated, and putting this kind of absurd legislation before us is frankly turning our institutions into a laughing stock. I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman keeps that in mind. Let us be clear: the only special or unique status that can be found in the Rwanda Bill and the treaty that accompanies it is in its extortionate implementation costs, its unlawful nature and its glaring unworkability.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the smoke and mirrors that have been used about clearing the backlog—lots of administrative withdrawals and other ways of just getting people out of the backlog—are being combined with shortening the eviction period, which is leading to a staggering increase in homelessness among those who have been granted asylum. What is happening is frankly a stain on the conscience of our country. A total lack of co-ordination between the Home Office, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and our colleagues in local authorities is leaving those local authorities high and dry.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent question. Sometimes the mask slips in the Government’s response to amendments. Perhaps they have decided, very disrespectfully, to refuse to engage on any of the Lords amendments because, exactly as he says, they worry that lifting the lid on this box might show a total failure inside.”
“Tens of thousands of people who are now ineligible to be processed and ineligible to claim asylum cannot be sent to Rwanda either. That backlog, the so-called perma-backlog, currently stands at 56,000 people, with most of them living in one of more than 300 taxpayer-funded hotels across the country, costing millions of pounds every single day.”
“I agree with every word my hon. Friend says. Just imagine if the amount of time, money, resource, energy and political capital burned on this hare-brained Rwanda scheme had been used to do things that might actually deliver, and just imagine if the Government had listened to Labour’s plan for delivering the change we need to see. We might have made some progress and seen things working. By the way, we supported what the Government have done with Albania. Why do we not see more of that, rather than this utterly ridiculous government by gimmick? What a waste of time and money. The level of waste and this Government’s cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money are utterly staggering. Where, oh where, is the plan for the remaining 99% of cases that the Government say will be inadmissible?”
“I hope that Conservative Members have been listening because, for the past 18 months, my right hon. Friend and I have been absolutely clear from this Dispatch Box how Labour will prevent the dangerous and life-threatening channel crossings, and how we will fix our broken asylum system. I have already mentioned how we would redirect the money set aside for the Rwandan Government into a cross-border police unit, an intelligence-sharing security partnership with Europol, in order to smash the criminal smuggling gangs upstream.”
“We need to see accountability on the inadmissibility provisions that have created the perma-backlog of 56,000 small boat asylum seekers who are stuck in limbo and are unable to be processed. If 99% of the people crossing in small boats are not likely to be sent to Rwanda, perhaps the Minister can tell us what will happen to them. Will he admit that, despite all his bluff and bluster, they will simply be let into our asylum system after all? No? The premise of inadmissibility was always that it is a one-way street to limbo and shambles, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, and I have continually warned Ministers in this Chamber over the past two years. Of course, there is an alternative.”
“My hon. Friend has done his maths on the £2 million. I particularly enjoyed his analogy with the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which shows that the Rwanda plan is a galactically wasteful policy. He is right that so much of this is about choices and priorities, and the Government’s choices and priorities are simply wrong in wasting valuable taxpayers’ money that would be much better focused elsewhere. That is why we support Lords amendment 8, a Labour Front-Bench amendment in the name of my noble Friend Lord Coaker. The amendment would require the Government to report on the timetable for removing inadmissible asylum seekers under the Illegal Migration Act 2023.”
“I apologise; I should have said “home country.” I would like to correct the record. It was “home country”. Apologies; I mis-spoke. Labour’s common-sense, pragmatic plan will smash the business model of the criminal gangs, deter dangerous journeys and tackle the backlog. With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will now run through the remaining nine amendments from the other place. We support each of them for the reasons I will now set out.”
“It beggars belief that the Government would even consider sending this cohort of heroes, who are fleeing the Taliban, to Rwanda. Britain’s commitment towards these loyal-to-Britain Afghans is, of course, felt most strongly by our own armed forces, but the Government have continually shirked their responsibilities towards Afghans, including by leaving thousands who have a right to be in the UK stranded in Pakistan for more than a year. It is little wonder that they have resorted to making desperate journeys across the channel. Operation Warm Welcome has become “Operation Cold Shoulder.””
“As I have already said—I do not know if the hon. Member was listening—this is about repurposing the vast quantities of taxpayers’ money that are being squandered on the hare-brained Rwanda plan. The re-channelling of that money will fund the clearance of the backlog, sort out returns and smash the criminal gangs. I would first like to focus on Lords amendment 10, tabled by the noble Lord Browne, which seeks to exempt individuals who have worked in support of the UK Government or armed forces from removal to Rwanda under the provisions of the Bill. The amendment is driven by a moral imperative: we owe a debt of gratitude to those who have supported our defence, diplomacy and development abroad, not least in Afghanistan.”
“The amendment is about stopping them being sent to Rwanda, but let us be absolutely clear: there are many, many Afghans, identified by the Government under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, who are languishing in Pakistan. We remember the Prime Minister’s memo to Whitehall saying, “By the way everybody, let’s slow peddle on these Afghans who are in Pakistan and have been identified for resettlement under the ACRS and ARAP.” If the hon. Member wants to know the number, I recommend that he goes to his own Government and asks how many have been identified under ARAP and ACRS.”
“It really should go without saying that modern slavery victims should not be sent to Rwanda but, sadly, with this Government, basic moral decency is a scarce commodity.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The scope of Lords amendment 10 is specifically for those who served shoulder to shoulder with our armed forces and in our diplomatic and development efforts in Afghanistan. These are people to whom the United Kingdom owes a debt of honour and a debt of gratitude. I am not sure whether honour is a word that we can apply very easily to those on the Conservative Benches, but that is what this is about. Lords amendment 9, in the name of the noble Baroness Butler-Sloss, is also based on a moral imperative, as it would prevent the removal of potential victims of modern slavery to Rwanda until they receive a decision from the Government on whether there is credible evidence that the person is a modern slavery victim.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes the case with passion and conviction. I know that he has a number of asylum seekers and refugees in his constituency and he does a huge amount of work on their behalf. He is absolutely right: there are some issues that should really transcend the day-to-day political considerations that we have in this place, because they are issues that are based on moral imperatives. It is deeply disappointing that, in Lords amendments 9 and 10, the Government have refused even to use them as the basis for negotiation or some kind of compromise. We find that deeply disappointing.”
“In that spirit, Lords amendment 1 is a Labour Front-Bench amendment that places a responsibility on the Government to comply in full with their current obligations under domestic and international law.”
“It restores the ability of domestic courts and tribunals to fully consider suspensive judicial review claims regarding removal decisions taken on the basis of age assessment of unaccompanied children. Lords amendments 1 to 6 all relate to the rule of law. We support all of those amendments, and they are all principles with which Government Ministers have said they agree. Indeed, the simple question that should be asked in relation to each one of these amendments is this: if Ministers believe that Rwanda is a safe country, then why are the Government refusing to support these amendments? They say that the Bill abides by international law, so why not make that clear in the Bill? They say that Rwanda is a safe country and is meeting its obligations, so let us see the evidence and agree a “trust but verify” mechanism.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said. What a contrast there is between his intervention and that of the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) from the Conservative Benches. I genuinely believe that when the hon. Member for Rother Valley reflects, he will regret making his intervention and perhaps reflect on what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. We on the Opposition Benches are profoundly concerned about unaccompanied children being inadvertently sent to Rwanda. For this reason, we support Lords amendment 7, in the name of the noble Baroness Lister, which reverses changes to age assessment procedures established by the Illegal Migration Act 2023 in relation specifically to removals to Rwanda.”
“If that is the case, why will Ministers not accept the amendment? Those in the other place, who have a great deal more constitutional expertise than I have, are simply seeking reassurance that our democratic conventions and obligations in relation to alignment with the rule of law will be respected. If that is the case, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, surely the amendments should be perfectly acceptable to the Government.”
“Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Government themselves accepted that the situation in Rwanda is not static but evolving, as it is in every country on the face of the Earth. If the Government accept that Rwanda could one day become safer for asylum seekers who are sent there from the UK, they must by definition accept that it could one day deteriorate. Lord Anderson’s amendments simply provide a basis for assessing the situation on the ground in Rwanda and acting accordingly.”
“Lords amendments 2 and 3, in the name of the noble Lord Hope, state that Rwanda may be considered a safe country only if and when the measures set out “in the Rwanda treaty have been fully implemented” and the monitoring committee has established that that is the case. The Government claim that the measures in the treaty address concerns in the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, so there is absolutely no reason why Ministers should refuse to accept Lord Hope’s amendments. Lords amendments 4 and 5, in the name of the noble Lord Anderson, state that Rwanda can be considered a safe country unless there is “credible evidence to the contrary”, as determined by a court or tribunal.”