Illegal Migration Bill: controversial bill set to become law after House of Lords backs down over challenges

The controversial Illegal Migration Bill is set to become law after the government won a number of final challenges made by the House of Lords.

MPs and Peers have been locked in a bitter tussle over the bill for many weeks, with the upper house seeking to impose new amendments around various areas of concern, including child detention and modern slavery.

However, the stalemate was broken last night (17 July), when the last of the proposed changes by the House of Lords were voted down in a late-night debate. The bill will now head for royal ascension to become a law.

Among those amendments being battles during the debate last night was the addition that the National Crime Agency would be required to give reported on immigration crime operations every three months. This was shot down by Peers by a vote of 201 to 166.

A total of five new challenges were defeated in the sitting, with one other vote scrapped altogether after a series of government victories.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, has been a vocal opponent of the bill. He had demanded that a 10-year strategy statement be provided on tackling the refugee issue and human trafficking in the UK, however he dropped this as the debate continued.

Throughout the debate, Mr Welby said: “I fail to see how this (the Bill) does it [stops small boats] and I have not heard anything to convince me.

He added: “The problem with the Bill is that it has not started at the right place. Where it needed to start with is… to have a level of national consensus and agreement on what the aim of our migration policy and immigration policy is in the long-term.”

Home Office minister Lord Murray of Blidworth was among those urging his peers to grant the bill permission to reach royal ascension. During the debate, he said that the issue of small boats arriving was a pressing one for the UK, with migrants "overwhelming" the country's asylum system and costing £6million per day to taxpayers for accommodation.

He added: “With over 45,000 people making dangerous Channel crossings last year this is simply no longer sustainable. If people know there is no way for them to stay in the UK, they won’t risk their lives and pay criminals thousands of pounds to arrive here illegally.

“It is therefore only right that we stop the boats and break the business model of the criminal gangs exploiting vulnerable people, ultimately enabling the Government to have greater capacity to provide a safe haven for those at risk of war and persecution.”

The Illegal Migration Bill, which was backed by MPs in March, was introduces after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made the pledge that his government would "stop the boats", with this being a mainstay of his policy since taking up office. The victory is welcomed by the government after the likewide highly-contorversial Rwanda plan - which would see migrants who arrive in the UK sent to Rwanda while their application is processed - was ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal last month.