My Lords, I will speak plainly. I believe the Bill to be a thoroughly reprehensible piece of legislation that would be more suited to a party of extremists than the party that saw one of its greatest leaders, Winston Churchill, among the architects of the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. How utterly ashamed I believe Churchill would be today of the Bill.
I am not alone in my concerns, and I am indebted to all organisations that have written to me and others about the Bill and the consequences for those seeking sanctuary and asylum: people who are among the most vulnerable, damaged, dehumanised and misrepresented —individuals who should command our support, understanding and compassion. But they are warned that they will instead be stripped of the most basic human rights by this Government, whom I call the Tufton Street mob. I am indebted particularly to Amnesty International for its briefing, as well as the Bar Council, the Royal Society of Psychiatrists, the British Red Cross and LGBT group Time to be Out.
I deeply regret the introduction of the Bill, which seeks to oust judicial control of executive powers, deny refugees their right to seek asylum in the United Kingdom, exclude victims from modern slavery protections, and strip some British children of their rights to British citizenship.
It plainly risks—and, I believe, seeks—conflict over the European Convention on Human Rights and the court. The Bill is a deliberate and carefully designed vehicle to put the UK on a collision course with the European Court of Human Rights, to further the ambition of the Tufton Street mob to whip up hatred of the court in support of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Convention on Human Rights. In that regard, the Bill is utterly cynical and an act of bad faith.
The Government argue in pursuit of a singular purpose, stated in Clause 1. It is
“to prevent and deter unlawful migration, and in particular migration by unsafe and illegal routes”,
as the Bill describes them. By citing this purpose, Ministers show a remarkable disregard for people’s real lives, real-world events, this country’s international obligations concerning these matters, and even Ministers’ own policy as it relates to these issues. Sadly and reprehensibly, in promoting the Bill, this lack of respect for law, fact and people’s innate dignity has led to Ministers expressing themselves in terms that are indecent and racist, and they have quite rightly been criticised by members of their own party.
The Bill is plainly not compliant with international human rights law—no doubt something that this Government, the Tufton Street mob, are proud of— nor is it compliant with basic principles of legality and constitutionality. I believe that it is a blight on the reputation of the United Kingdom as a civilised, law-abiding, constitutionally sound and democratically accountable nation. It is my profound belief that Parliament is better than this vicious, far-right piece of legislation, and that the British people are better—a people known for compassion, understanding and basic human decency.
We will deal in greater detail with the brutal injustices of the Bill, but I will name just some. Several provisions, in effect, oust judicial oversight. Clauses 31 and 52 deny refugees their basic right to seek asylum and put minorities, such as LGBT people, at greater risk, as brilliantly expounded by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton.
The Bill excludes victims from modern slavery protections; it can deprive British children of their citizenship rights, as I said before; and there are new powers to indefinitely detain pregnant women. Women for Refugee Women’s research has found that most women seeking asylum in the United Kingdom are survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence, including domestic violence, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and female genital mutilation, yet these women arriving through so-called unsafe and illegal routes will be detained and sent to so-called safe third countries.
As I read this, I find it unbelievable that I am doing so inside a British Parliament and that this Bill and its intentions originate from a British Government. How quickly we can be debased and reduced by those eager to misrepresent the most vulnerable as a threat to our culture and way of life, and as cannibalising our values, and to whip up public opinion against them. How reminiscent it is of the 1930s, and how I so agree with Mr Gary Lineker and his denunciation of the language used.
In conclusion, I paraphrase Shakespeare and a play that he co-wrote, “Sir Thomas More”. The strangers have made their way from Calais to Dover, and on to London. The citizens of London, whipped up by the mob, become unruly. Thomas More stands before them and someone in the crowd shouts: “Remove them!” He replies: “You bid that they be removed, the stranger with their children upon their back, their families at their side, their belongings at their feet. You bid that they be removed. Imagine you are the stranger, with your children upon your back, your family at your side, your belongings at your feet. Imagine you are the stranger and bid that they be removed and show your mountanish inhumanity”.
Such inhumanity is within the Illegal Migration Bill, and we should consign it to the dustbin of far-right politics.
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