Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

Part of Nationality and Borders Bill - Commons Reasons – in the House of Lords at 5:16 pm on 27 April 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Baroness Chakrabarti Baroness Chakrabarti Labour 5:16, 27 April 2022

My Lords, once more I thank noble Lords for caring about the refugee convention, and I thank the Minister for the courtesy of each and every one of our exchanges over many months.

Last night, however, her colleagues in the other place gave barely one thought, and certainly two fingers, to your Lordships’ House. The Minister there made just one argument, a shorter version of the noble Baroness the Minister’s, which I will come to. He gave just one argument against my amendment: that courts should not be able to declare laws incompatible with human rights. Therefore, the Government’s position in the other place moved from “this Bill complies with our obligations and so do we” to “and what’s more, the courts have no place at all in scrutinising our compliance.” Yet earlier today, on the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, for whom I have enormous respect, urged us to trust courts. That was in relation to prospective-only quashing orders, which generally will be more likely to suit the Government than individuals, let alone desperate, vulnerable refugees.

The Minister developed her colleague’s argument a little more just now, and I am grateful for that. She made a distinction regarding being able sometimes to declare laws incompatible with the ECHR, on the basis of the European convention having a court in Strasbourg that sits as an occasionally perhaps supernatural, but certainly supranational court. However, I am afraid that that distinction does not work for me, not least because many of her colleagues spent many years complaining about that international court and saying that our courts know better and that therefore, we should pay less attention to the court in Strasbourg and more attention to empowering our own courts. That is what the courts themselves have done in recent years in relation to the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Act. They have been more confident as domestic courts empowered to defend our rights and freedoms here. That is what our courts should be doing in relation to the refugee convention as well.

What is more, one minute, the Minister said that the refugee convention was not incorporated into our law, and the next she reminded us that it is, by way of Section 2 of the 1993 Act, which provides that Immigration Rules must comply with the refugee convention. How odd it is that Immigration Rules, which are a legislative device, should comply with the refugee convention but individual acts of discretion, whether by Home Secretaries, immigration officers or prosecutors, need not necessarily do so. That seems very odd indeed—an internally illogical and incoherent argument.

We talked about human rights all over the world at Oral Questions earlier and had the privilege of hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon. Democratic states have written constitutions which entrust supreme courts with the authority to hold Governments to account and even to strike down legislation that violates fundamental rights. Here, in our system, courts can only ensure that executive discretion is lawfully exercised, including by prosecutors, immigration officers and Home Secretaries. Executive discretion is lawfully exercised and very rarely can declarations, which are only persuasive, be issued. The incompatible law remains in place and the declaration is simply, “Please think again, Government and Parliament.” That is done when a law is found to be absolutely in violation of fundamental rights. However, it now seems that even that level of judicial scrutiny is too rich for this Government’s blood.

I recognise that we may be only a revising second Chamber, but if not to defend the rule of law, what are we for?