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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I hope that I may make another point without tiring the Committee. I am not suggesting that the Government are acting improperly; they are perfectly entitled to do what they are doing. However, I am suggesting that what they are doing is politically driven and is doomed to failure for the reasons I have given, but that is a different matter. Further, I still have not had an answer to my question how you square the circle of saying on the one hand you would never send someone to a country where they faced the risk of torture, and yet on the other hand putting forward an argument to give you the right to do that. I have said that in principle I am not opposed to the idea of a memorandum of understanding. However, in practice everything would depend on whether the UK courts or the Strasbourg court in a particular case concerning a memorandum of understanding—not in the Dutch case in which we are intervening—came to the conclusion that the memorandum of understanding meant that the decision-taker, that is, the Minister, was entitled to say that there would be no substantial risk of torture in sending the relevant person to the country concerned. But that will not arise as regards what is being argued in Strasbourg; that would be a question on a specific memorandum of understanding in the future. It failed in Chahal where there was not a proper memorandum of understanding sufficiently robust to convince that court. But that is a question of fact on evidence; what we are talking about is the principle—should Article 3 be qualified by any balance in terms of national security? In my view the answer is firmly ““no””.