Lord Anderson KBE KC was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation from 2011-17. He was knighted for services to national security and civil liberties. He’s hardly a ‘leftie lawyer’.
Expressing his contempt for the British government in the final Lords debate on the Rwanda legislation on April 22, he said: “The Rwanda bill is a legal fiction that makes the law look like an ass and those who make it asses.”
Usually a legal fiction is an instrument of the courts to resolve an injustice. In this instance, however, it’s a fiction this British government has created, an assertion by parliament that creates a fiction, namely that Rwanda is safe.
It flies in the face of the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda “would expose them to real risk of ill-treatment by reason of refoulement” [returning people to face personal harm].
The UN forbids it. The UK is a signatory of several treaties forbidding it including the Refugee Convention. It’s also a basic tenet of international law.
This British government doesn’t care. National or international commitments mean nothing to them.
Some people say that passing the Rwanda Act into law therefore makes the UK a rogue state. No, the UK became a rogue state during the charlatan Johnson’s time as prime minister, abetted by grovelling, low-quality ministers (as they would have to be) prepared to do his bidding, including misleading the queen as head of state and unlawfully proroguing parliament.
Who can forget the infamous statement in parliament by the north’s former proconsul, Brandon Lewis, in 2020 that he intended “to break international law”? Johnson and his ministers deliberately signed agreements and treaties like the Withdrawal Act and the Protocol with the intention of ratting on them as soon as possible.
It was Lewis who ratted on the Stormont House Agreement agreed by parties here and the Irish government in order to give an amnesty to British soldiers enshrined in the obnoxious Legacy Act, which comes into force today.
Unusually, we have two acts coming into operation this week, the Legacy Act and the Rwanda Act, both of which will be found illegal, both of which exemplify the immorality and untrustworthiness of this government. Indeed the High Court has already found parts of the shameful Legacy Act unlawful.
This disgraceful, corrupt, scandal-dogged, lying, dying British government doesn’t care. They operate, in the words of Harvard Professor Caroline Elkins, legalised lawlessness. If they don’t like a law they override it, turning legality on its head with another law making a mockery of the rule of law itself.
The law is what they say it is. There has never been such a depraved, immoral British government since 1918 with the last all-Ireland proconsul, Hamar Greenwood, lying through his teeth in parliament on a daily basis from 1920-22, justifying the unjustifiable. Just like now.
Maybe it’s good that the Irish government has been dragged into the Rwanda mess. They might begin to take an interest in the north though, as of yesterday, neither Simon Harris nor, perhaps unsurprisingly in the case of Micheál Martin, had been in contact with Michelle O’Neill to discuss numbers of asylum seekers heading south.
It will be interesting to see Harris’ emergency legislation for returning asylum seekers north, especially if there’s no consultation with the Stormont executive and more especially since Rishi Sunak says he’s “not interested” in any deal with the Republic on migration returns.
It will take years to undo the damage this Conservative government has done to Anglo-Irish relations, never mind to the British economy, society and public services.
Keir Starmer has said he will repeal the Rwanda act if elected and there’s no doubt he will quickly, not least because it will help restore Britain’s credibility as a country governed by the rule of law.
He has also said he will repeal the Legacy Act, a commitment repeated elsewhere on these pages today by his shadow proconsul, Hilary Benn.
It will take years to undo the damage this Conservative government has done to Anglo-Irish relations, never mind to the British economy, society and public services
It would be incredible if Starmer, a former DPP and human rights lawyer, but now right-wing politician, did not restore the inquest system which has operated in England since the eleventh century and the coroner’s court established in 1194.
Nevertheless, the European Court of Human Rights may not strike down the whole act, so Starmer might wait to see what the judgment is before making substantive changes.
In short, the evil this Conservative government has done lives after them.