Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and I agree with a very great deal of what she said. I simply emphasise again some particularly disturbing elements of the Bill, declaring an interest as an advisory board member of the British Institute of Human Rights. The word “illegal” does indeed characterise it. Even the Home Secretary considers that it “may be incompatible” with the Human Rights Act. It also contravenes an astonishing number of legal instruments we are party to, as well as our own laws. To instance the most egregious, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes

“a clear breach of the Refugee Convention”

in the disqualifying nature of the mode of arrival, as my noble friend Lord Dubs noted.

As a former trustee of UNICEF UK, I note that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s concept of the “best interests of children”, incorporated into our law, is so drastically qualified as to be undermined by Clauses 2, 3, 4, 21, 22 and 31. The common-law right of access to justice and its reflection in the European Convention on Human Rights provisions for a fair trial is impaired in numerous ways in the Bill, not least with the power of removal and prohibition of ever applying for asylum or even entering the UK. The undermining of the Modern Slavery Act in Clause 21 arguably means that a trafficked person can either go to the authorities and be removed or stay with the trafficker and let the abuse continue. The Bill is even retrospective in its application, which is another departure from a principle of justice.

What has prompted this extraordinary and unprecedented break with tradition and the rule of law, which we usually see as a conservative principle? The Prime Minister cites the small boats crossing the channel. But, of course, the Bill’s reach goes far beyond those to any arrival by so-called irregular means, whether or not a safe legal route is available, which there is not, apart from in the case of Afghanistan, to a degree, Syria, Ukraine and Hong Kong. I ask the Minister—he is not in his place, but I hope that somebody is noting this—what the legal route is for people fleeing well-grounded fears of persecution in Iran, Eritrea or Sudan.

My noble friends Lord Dubs, Lord Rooker and Lord Browne of Ladyton referred to humanist refugees. How can the Government describe Nigeria as safe for a humanist refugee when the Nigerian Government maintain the death penalty for blasphemy—along with 10 other countries on the Bill’s “safe country” list in Schedule 1—and when they have sentenced the president of the country’s humanist association to 24 years in prison?

This law’s apparent departure from conservatism has not escaped several Conservative Members of the other place. They may be thinking of their 2019 manifesto, which said:

“We will continue to grant asylum … to refugees fleeing persecution”.


My noble friend Lord Coaker, in his stirring speech, cited former Prime Minister Theresa May and former Attorney-General Sir Geoffrey Cox KC suggesting that Parliament was being asked to approve a deliberate breach of our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. Outside Parliament, the Children’s Commissioner, appointed by this Government, said:

“My worry is it will make traffickers even bolder”.


Yet again, undemocratically wide powers are given to the Executive, in eight clauses by my reckoning, some of which amount to arbitrary power. Surely the real abuse in our dealing with asylum is the horrific backlog in clearing applications, which are anyway very many fewer than in comparable western countries. This is itself, arguably, a denial of rights—and it is so incompetently managed.

The laws that this Bill seeks to overthrow were not made to add bureaucracy. They were hammered out by the governments and peoples of the world to shape how we deal with crises without losing essential values. Those values, of fairness in the application of law, of recognition of people’s essential needs and of our common humanity, are not the ones expressed by this Bill. This Government should not assume that they share the values of the British people. I am not sure that they even share mainstream Conservative values. What does the noble Lord the Minister think?

Finally, the Bill is at odds, as it stands, with practical sense. Practical ways to deal with the quest of refugees for safety would include safe legal routes, as so many noble Lords have said, thus undermining recourse to people smugglers, and competent processes to deal with applications in a timely fashion. Surely we are capable of that.