Politics

Rwanda bill: Justin Welby preaches to the converted in House of Lords

Published

1 year ago

January 29, 2024

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was preaching to the converted.

To a majority of members of the House of Lords, the government’s Rwanda bill is an unholy abomination.

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Last week, their lordships voted by 214 votes to 171, a majority of 43, to delay ratification of the Rwanda treaty until safeguards had been implemented.

And in his speech during the second reading debate on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, Mr Welby accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of a “pick and choose approach” to international law.

The archbishop began his speech by telling peers the heart of the Christian tradition was that strangers were welcomed.

“Jesus said ‘I was a stranger and you invited me in’,” he said.

And there were loud cries of “hear, hear!” from around the Lords’ chamber when the archbishop declared: “We can as a nation do better than this bill.”

He went on: “With this bill, the government is continuing to seek good objectives in the wrong way, leading the nation down a damaging path.

“It is damaging for asylum seekers in need of protection and safe and legal routes to be heard.

“It is damaging for this country’s reputation, which it contradicts even as late as last week where the prime minister himself spoke eloquently on the value and importance of international law for this country.”

No-one could accuse the archbishop of contradicting himself on this issue. He led opposition in the Lords to the Illegal Migration Bill, which resulted in a series of defeats for the government.

He has previously described the Rwanda policy as “against the judgement of God”, and he served notice in this debate that he’s prepared to play a full part in their lordships’ attempts to pull the bill apart in the coming weeks.

He ended his speech by saying that he would not be voting for an amendment proposed by Liberal Democrat peer Lord German to vote down the bill at this point, though he found the argument for it “convincing and powerful”.

Lord German’s amendment, which Labour won’t be supporting either, declines to give the bill a second reading for five reasons:

• It places the UK at risk because it breaches international commitments;
• It undermines the rule of law;
• It will lead to substantial costs to taxpayers;
• It fails to provide safe and legal routes for refugees;
• It fails to include measures to tackle people smuggling gangs.

Without Labour support, the Lib Dem amendment has no chance of being passed.

But, ominously for the government, Mr Welby said he wanted to wait until third reading, after amendments have been made to the bill, before taking a decision on whether or not it should pass.

Mr Sunak has urged peers not to block “the will of the people”.

But the archbishop’s argument, essentially, is that the will of God trumps the will of the people.

And many of their lordships appear to agree.

Politics

Crypto regulation needs more technologists and fewer suits

Published

1 hour ago

June 16, 2025

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Crypto regulation needs more technologists and fewer suits

The crypto community is missing the opportunity to reimagine rather than transpose rulemaking for financial services. More technologists must join the regulatory conversation.

Politics

Whitehall officials tried to cover up grooming scandal in 2011, Dominic Cummings says

Published

1 hour ago

June 16, 2025

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Whitehall officials tried to cover up grooming scandal in 2011, Dominic Cummings says

Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.

Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.

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The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.

In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.

The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.

Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.

Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.

“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’

“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…

“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”

The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.

A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.

One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.

There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.

Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.

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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.

He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”

He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.

Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.

“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.

The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.