Lord Howard of Lympne is a former Leader of the Conservative Party and Home Secretary. He was MP for Folkestone and Hythe from 1983 until 2010.
Opponents of the government’s Rwanda policy like to state that it is immoral. They are wrong. The immoral course would be to let the current situation continue, to let criminal gangs continue to ply their evil trade, to continue to allow vulnerable people to be lured into making this dangerous journey.
The problem in the Channel cannot be ignored. The numbers crossing in small boats has more than quadrupled in the last two years. If nothing is done, these numbers will continue to grow at this kind of rate. Tragedies will become more common – and remember that this year alone, 2,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean.
We need to break the business model of the criminal gangs. The only way to do that is to show that if you come here illegally, you will not get to stay in this country, you will not be put up in an expensive taxpayer funded hotel, and you will not be able to use our legal system to frustrate your removal.
Once people realise that: the boats will stop coming and the ability of the people smugglers to carry out their evil trade will be diminished. Deterrence works – as Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy and our own deal with Albania have shown.
Now, I know as a former Home Secretary that many of those arriving here cannot simply be sent back to their own countries. That is why the Government has secured an agreement with Rwanda to accommodate these people. This means that those who are fleeing persecution will not have to return home. Instead, they will have a chance to start a new life in Rwanda.
Rwanda is a safe country. Indeed, the United Nations’ own refugee agency uses Rwanda to house refugees from Libya. The High Court agreed that Rwanda is a safe country. The Court of Appeal agreed that Rwanda itself was a safe country – but two of its judges thought there remained a risk that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda under this policy could be wrongly returned to other countries.
Judicial review is an important element in our system. But judges should only strike down the actions of our democratically elected government when its decisions are clearly wrong. It should not be a vehicle for the substitution of the personal views of individual judges for the view of Ministers who are accountable to parliament.
In this case two judges, including the Lord Chief Justice, the most senior judge in England, found in favour of the government and two against. So it is clearly impossible to argue that no reasonable person could consider the action of the government unlawful. I hope the Supreme Court will take this into account when they come to consider the case.
Rather than indulging in moral posturing, critics should realise that there is no moral alternative to the Rwanda policy. As my old friend Ken Clarke said in the House of Lords last week, opponents of the policy have not come up with any practicable alternative to it. They are essentially arguing that the Government should abandon its first duty, to protect the borders of its state. They are proposing that criminal gangs should be allowed to bring an unlimited number of people to this country. This would be a terrible outcome.
We cannot allow the current situation to continue. If we do, our asylum system will collapse. We all have a responsibility to fix the system so we can ensure that we help those who are most in need.
That’s why on its return to the Lords this week, I urge my fellow peers across the house to resist overturning a striking Commons majority and allow the Illegal Migration Bill to continue its passage without amendments that would diminish its effect in breaking the business model of the criminal gangs and preventing us from controlling our borders.
Britain is a generous country. Just look at how many families have thrown open their homes to Ukrainian refugees fleeing Putin’s barbaric invasion. But the British people, reasonably and rightly, want control. They want to know that it is their government, not criminal gangs, who are deciding who comes to this country. This is the right approach, the moral approach.
Lord Howard of Lympne is a former Leader of the Conservative Party and Home Secretary. He was MP for Folkestone and Hythe from 1983 until 2010.
Opponents of the government’s Rwanda policy like to state that it is immoral. They are wrong. The immoral course would be to let the current situation continue, to let criminal gangs continue to ply their evil trade, to continue to allow vulnerable people to be lured into making this dangerous journey.
The problem in the Channel cannot be ignored. The numbers crossing in small boats has more than quadrupled in the last two years. If nothing is done, these numbers will continue to grow at this kind of rate. Tragedies will become more common – and remember that this year alone, 2,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean.
We need to break the business model of the criminal gangs. The only way to do that is to show that if you come here illegally, you will not get to stay in this country, you will not be put up in an expensive taxpayer funded hotel, and you will not be able to use our legal system to frustrate your removal.
Once people realise that: the boats will stop coming and the ability of the people smugglers to carry out their evil trade will be diminished. Deterrence works – as Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy and our own deal with Albania have shown.
Now, I know as a former Home Secretary that many of those arriving here cannot simply be sent back to their own countries. That is why the Government has secured an agreement with Rwanda to accommodate these people. This means that those who are fleeing persecution will not have to return home. Instead, they will have a chance to start a new life in Rwanda.
Rwanda is a safe country. Indeed, the United Nations’ own refugee agency uses Rwanda to house refugees from Libya. The High Court agreed that Rwanda is a safe country. The Court of Appeal agreed that Rwanda itself was a safe country – but two of its judges thought there remained a risk that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda under this policy could be wrongly returned to other countries.
Judicial review is an important element in our system. But judges should only strike down the actions of our democratically elected government when its decisions are clearly wrong. It should not be a vehicle for the substitution of the personal views of individual judges for the view of Ministers who are accountable to parliament.
In this case two judges, including the Lord Chief Justice, the most senior judge in England, found in favour of the government and two against. So it is clearly impossible to argue that no reasonable person could consider the action of the government unlawful. I hope the Supreme Court will take this into account when they come to consider the case.
Rather than indulging in moral posturing, critics should realise that there is no moral alternative to the Rwanda policy. As my old friend Ken Clarke said in the House of Lords last week, opponents of the policy have not come up with any practicable alternative to it. They are essentially arguing that the Government should abandon its first duty, to protect the borders of its state. They are proposing that criminal gangs should be allowed to bring an unlimited number of people to this country. This would be a terrible outcome.
We cannot allow the current situation to continue. If we do, our asylum system will collapse. We all have a responsibility to fix the system so we can ensure that we help those who are most in need.
That’s why on its return to the Lords this week, I urge my fellow peers across the house to resist overturning a striking Commons majority and allow the Illegal Migration Bill to continue its passage without amendments that would diminish its effect in breaking the business model of the criminal gangs and preventing us from controlling our borders.
Britain is a generous country. Just look at how many families have thrown open their homes to Ukrainian refugees fleeing Putin’s barbaric invasion. But the British people, reasonably and rightly, want control. They want to know that it is their government, not criminal gangs, who are deciding who comes to this country. This is the right approach, the moral approach.