Illegal Migration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in opening this debate the Minister said:

“Our broken asylum system is costing the country some £3 billion a year”.


I thought I would look up the list of Home Secretaries since 12 May 2010—Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman again. Which one of those does the Minister hold responsible for our self-described “broken asylum system”? Or is it all of them?

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has covered the general horrors of this indefensible Bill. I am going to focus on some of the actual people, the individuals, who will be caught by it. They will be subjected to what can only be described as utterly unacceptable, inhumane and abusive treatment.

The Minister in his introduction said that 70% of the children arriving were aged over 16. So they would only spend two years or fewer warehoused here in the UK before it is time for “Happy birthday, your present is a deportation flight”. Of course, that means that 30% of cases will be facing more than two years in that situation of warehousing. For an eight year-old, 10 year- old or a 12 year-old, what would such a situation—the full knowledge of such a fate—do to their health and well-being? That that treatment breaks the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is only a statement of the obvious.

As the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Sugg, and others, highlighted, pregnant refugees are also trapped by this Bill—a small but important victory won by cross-party campaigns in 2016 to exclude them from immigration detention would be wiped out. Their babies will be born into indefinite detention. How long will they stay in that situation? How inhuman are the Government prepared to be?

There are people with mental health conditions and refugees who arrive here with conditions often induced by torture or war, or who develop them as a result of our hostile environment. I have a direct question for the Minister. Has he read the detailed forensic examinations of the impacts of the Bill from the Royal College of Psychiatrists? It quotes the Shaw review, which found that

“immigration detention has a negative impact on detainees’ mental health”

and that

“the impact on mental health increases the longer detention continues”.

As many noble Lords have said, there are victims of modern slavery and trafficking. The Royal College report points out how frequently they, understandably, suffer from complex and difficult to treat PTSD. What will indefinite detention or removal to Rwanda do to them?

Picking up on that group, I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for some information from an impeccable source—unpublished Home Office information—that shows that there is already an outrageous and persistent slavery-survivor protection gap. Of the 11,137 confirmed cases—I emphasise that figure—of trafficking and modern slavery survivors being referred for consideration for discretionary leave to remain in the six years and nine months between April 2016 and December 2022, only 738, or 7%, have been granted leave to remain. Far from refugees gaming the system, we have a system that is already a lottery, and the Bill takes away any chance for those people to establish a secure life for themselves.

On people who will particularly suffer under the Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, mentioned LGBTQIA+ refugees. Rwanda is not safe for them, and neither are many of the other countries to which they might, theoretically, be shipped.

Some might say that the particularly vulnerable people I have listed are not the majority of refugees who reach our shores by non-orderly means. As the Minister said, the overwhelming majority of arrivals were adult males under the age of 40—that is a fact. They are men like the refugee now settled in Norway, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, referred. But what do the Benches opposite have against young men? Most of them were young men, once.

I finish with a couple of general points arising from the debate. First, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, said, asylum is a collective responsibility of all states, as the UNHCR and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, among many others, pointed out. If other nations followed the Bill’s lead, there would be a breakdown in the international system of refuge. Secondly, again highlighting the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, this is not a small boats Bill; its provisions would affect all who seek refugee status in this country. It is a comprehensive anti-refugee Bill.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean—who is not in his place, unfortunately—quoted John Stuart Mill:

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing”.


That is a useful reflection on the amendment to this Motion—the Liberal Democrats’ bid, which has whole- hearted Green backing, to stop the Bill in its tracks now. We have heard all the usual reasons and excuses for why we should not: “We are only a House of review”, or “We are only an unelected House”. I will repeat a question that I put on Part 4 of what is now the police Act, which explicitly targets Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. It is a direct question to those planning to vote against, or abstain on, the amendment on stopping the Bill. Is there nothing you would stop? Where do you draw the line? Surely you have a line.