Tuesday’s vote on the Rwanda legislation proposed by the government will be consequential both politically and in terms of the policy substance. Moderate and pragmatic Conservative MPs are always inclined to be loyal to the leadership. Indeed, we are often portrayed as herbivores, as opposed to the carnivores among our colleagues. Since their recent diet has mainly been Conservative prime ministers, I prefer our way of doing politics.
We are also habitually inclined to see support for the rule of law, and the UK meeting its international obligations, as part of the bedrock of Conservatism, along with free enterprise and individual liberty. We accept that governments should obey the law just as citizens and corporations must. When you sign a treaty you should stick to it, both for reasons of honour and for the simple point that if you don’t, others will be reluctant to make agreements with you in the future.
So, our attitude to the Rwanda deal has always been that it must be effective as a deterrent — we want to stop the boats as much as anyone else — but that it must also be within the law. That is why One Nation Conservatives have been taking legal advice about the government’s proposals.
The concerns we have fall into three sections. We are worried about legislation by assertion, in that the bill baldly states that Rwanda is safe. The government needs to show that this is the case. The bill also gives ministers powers without a chance of review, which also needs exploration. The third concern is the removal of the duty on public authorities not to breach human rights.
These are genuine concerns. Legal experts will have differing views about each of them, but they add up to a series of important questions which ministers will need to address to maximise support, not just for the second reading debate on Tuesday but for the more detailed consideration at the committee stage of the bill. Beyond that of course lie the House of Lords’ stages of the bill. Making sure that the bill does stay within the law, as the prime minister has promised, matters as much to some MPs and peers as it apparently does to the Rwandan government.
I fear we will hear a lot in the coming days of the argument that “parliament is sovereign” as though that trumps everything. It is of course the case that parliament can pass any law it likes but our constitution works because parliament tries not to do outrageous things. It could pass a law saying that the five-year term between general elections has been increased to 20 years, but I don’t think the public would stand for it.
I exaggerate to make the point that any government bringing forward difficult and controversial legislation needs to be sure that it is not breaching the important conventions that underpin parliamentary sovereignty. Those conventions insist that legal restraints must play a part in stopping the state becoming over-mighty.
The prime minister has said himself that these measures go within an inch of breaking the boundaries, but that they remain within them. I want that to be true. The One Nation Caucus has welcomed the government’s decision to continue to meet the UK’s international commitments, but that should not disguise the real concerns we have about the detailed proposals within the bill.
We will meet on Monday to discuss what will no doubt be a range of views about the appropriate response.
