The Bishop of Leeds spoke in a debate on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill on 14th February 2024, pointing out the need for demonstration of Rwanda’s safety, and the risks associated with the country’s safety being declared indefinitely:
The Lord Bishop of Leeds: My Lords, I will be very brief. I endorse the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I want to question slightly the use of truth because there is a difference between truth and factuality. Something can be not factual, but it can be true. Let us look at a parable, for example. We have not even got as far as factuality when we are talking about truth. To put it very simply—I am in terrible danger of evoking Immanuel Kant here, but I will try to avoid that—if I say I am a banana, it does not make me a banana. There has to be some credible questioning of that. I am not a banana. A country does not become safe because someone says it is, even if a Government say that. That has to be demonstrated, and it has to be open to question, particularly, as has been said many times, because the word “is”—we are getting very Clintonesque in his impeachment hearings when we get into the meaning of “is”—has a permanence about it that does not allow for the possibility of change. I fail to see rationally how this is such a problem for the Government, other than that there is an ideological drive in this which is not open to argument.
The Church of England in Parliament 
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