Theresa May tells Commons small boats Bill will not work
THERESA MAY has criticised the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill for “shutting the door” in the faces of genuine victims of persecution.
Speaking at the Second Reading of the Bill yesterday evening, the former prime minister also warned that the legislation would not work as the people smugglers and migrants would find another way to get into Britain.
“Whenever you close a route for migrants, the migrants and the people smugglers find another way. Anybody who thinks that this Bill will deal with the issue of illegal migration, once and for all, is wrong,” she told MPS.
The House of Commons voted 312 to 250 to give the Bill a second reading.
No Conservative MPS voted against it, while a handful – including Mrs May, Chris Skidmore and Caroline Nokes – abstained.
Mrs May was among a number of senior Tory backbenchers who voiced concern over the Government’s Bill, which places a legal duty on the Home Secretary to deport migrants who enter the UK illegally to their home country or a safe third country, such as Rwanda, to claim asylum there.
Mrs May said the “blanket dismissal” of anyone fleeing persecution would mean genuine victims, such as a young woman escaping Iran, would “have the door shut in her face” despite Britain’s tradition of welcoming them “regardless of whether they come through a safe and legal route”.
She said: “By definition, someone fleeing for their life will more often than not be unable to access a legal route.
“I don’t think it’s enough to say we will meet our requirements by sending people to claim asylum in Rwanda.
“And this matters because of the reputation of the UK on the world stage. And that matters because the UK’S ability to play a role internationally is based on our reputation, not because we are British, but because of what we stand for.”
Mrs May warned that plans to refuse modern slavery claims by those who arrived illegally would be “shutting the door on victims while being trafficked into slavery in the UK”.
She said ministers had failed to provide evidence to justify government claims that small boat migrants were abusing the Modern Slavery Act, which she introduced when in No 10. And she questioned whether the plans would work, given the risks of legal challenge and difficulties of detaining and deporting thousands of migrants.
Sir Robert Buckland, former justice secretary, urged the Government to rethink plans to take powers to detain and deport children and women.
“There’s nothing worse than ineffective authoritarianism and that’s the danger of provisions like that,” he said.
He was backed by Sir Bob Neill, chairman of the Commons justice committee, and Simon Hoare, a senior Tory MP, who said he would vote for it but with “a clear understanding that we wish to see amendments to it as it progresses through Parliament, in particular in relation to women who are trafficked and to children”.
Mr Skidmore, a former minister, said he was “not prepared to break international law or the human rights conventions”. Mrs Nokes, a former immigration minister, declared her intention to oppose the Bill on Sunday.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, insisted it was “perfectly respectable” for her, as a child of immigrants, to say that “we’ve had too much immigration in recent years”.