Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)

My Lords, as foreshadowed by my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower, I have two amendments in this group that seek to amend the Front Bench disapplication provision for the Human Rights Act. Of course, disapplication feels rather “yesterday”; the Overton window on the question of human rights law is now clearly swinging in favour of repeal of the Human Rights Act, following the excellent report produced by my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and the announcement of the party’s new policy. Be that as it may, for the purposes of this Bill, the correct approach, which I suggest the Minister should grasp with both hands, is to disapply the effect of the convention and the operation of the Act in the sphere of immigration decisions. Disapplying the Human Rights Act from this area is not unprecedented. As the Minister will recall, this provision was incorporated, in a slightly different form, in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act, and it was clearly a matter that passed both Houses of Parliament. It is both a precedented and a necessary step. I turn briefly to the context for my amendment. The amendment itself would add two further provisions to the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Davies: that is, to include in the operation Section 4 of the Human Rights Act, which is the court power to make a declaration of incompatibility, and Section 10, which is a power to remedy any incompatibility by means of a statutory instrument. As Policy Exchange observed in its paper on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act in December 2023, that disapplication provision did not mention Sections 4 and 10 and was the worse for it, because the experience has been that, where a court can make a declaration of incompatibility, those matters are taken almost automatically by the Government as warranting some sort of remedial step. No Government so far have ignored a declaration of incompatibility, to my knowledge. For example, in the recent case where the Northern Irish High Court found an incompatibility in the legacy Act, the decision of the Government was to bring forward a remedial order to have the effect of suspending the operation of the provisions of that Act without waiting for primary legislation, itself a controversial move. To avoid that situation recurring, I have tabled these amendments to exclude from any potential challenge to immigration-related decisions a decision by a court to make a declaration of incompatibility, or a decision by a Government to attempt to remedy it by making a remedial order under Section 10 of the Human Rights Act. It is clearly time that we took back control of the United Kingdom’s borders. This Government, and particularly this Home Office, know the difficulties that trying to operate within the constraints of the Human Rights Act has generated as it has evolved. I encourage the Minister to accept a provision similar to this so that he can implement the policies of his Government.