Lords Focussing On "Best Interests" Of Children In Plans To Amend Rwanda Bill

A Labour peer is considering changes to Rishi Sunak's Safety of Rwanda Bill that focus on increasing protections for children as the contentious legislation to declare Rwanda a safe country makes its way through the House of Lords.

Ahead of the Bill returning to the upper house next week, Baroness Ruth Lister has put her name to amendments relating to unaccompanied children which would force ministers to seek independent advice on how best to protect the welfare of children who may be deported to Rwanda with their families under government plans to tackle illegal migration.  

The issue of protections for children was already discussed at length when the Illegal Migration Act – the legislation that the Safety of Rwanda Bill seeks to underscore – made its way through Parliament last year.

Speaking during the Second Reading of the Rwanda Bill in the Lords at the end of last month, Lister said that she had a number of concerns, including “the incompatibility of the treaty and Bill with our international obligations, the treatment of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and of children, and the widespread scepticism about claims of a supposed deterrent effect”. 

The Safety of Rwanda Bill aims to revive the government's plans of deporting asylum seekers to the African country, after earlier plans were blocked by the courts on human rights grounds. 

It has been brought to Parliament alongside a new treaty with Rwanda, which seeks to guarantee the country's safety. 

Lister told PoliticsHome that she would not “want to predict at this stage how far the amendments would get” in the parliamentary process, but she thinks its “so important” that “parliament has the opportunity to really consider what is in the best interests of children”. 

One of the