Illegal Migration Bill

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Last year, child poverty nearly doubled, workers’ wages fell at the fastest rate in decades and there was a more than 25% jump in people sleeping on the streets, while our schools and hospitals continued to crumble with their funding slashed. These are the crises that grip our country, but instead of addressing them, the Tories focus on this: whipping up fear and hate, demonising people who flee war and torture and whose only supposed crime is wanting to rebuild their lives in Britain.

This Bill is not really about stopping the boats. No one believes it will do that. It is about scapegoating. It is about diverting attention. It is about pretending that the crisis we face is people arriving in dinghies, not growing poverty and inequality. It is about pretending that the challenges our constituents face are not due to soaring bills and a collapsing NHS but due to refugees. This Bill is really about divide and rule. It is about the Tories’ plan to get ahead in the polls and desperately cling to power, even if that means breaking international law and throwing refugees under the bus. I do not think anyone believes that this Bill will work on its own terms. I do not think Government Members believe it will work.

The real problem is the terms that the Bill sets. These are not boats that we are legislating on, but people. They are people the vast majority of whom have their asylum claims accepted once they are here, and who are taking this route because the Government have closed safe routes for refugees and refuse to create new ones.

This is really a crisis of compassion. It is a crisis of solidarity that has been created by those at the top. A decade ago it was David Cameron who called refugees a “swarm”; today the Home Secretary uses the far-right language of an “invasion”. Instead of pandering to the right-wing press and attacking the rights of refugees, let us defeat this Bill and actually address the real sources of the problems in this country.