Small boats crisis latest: Labour MPs will be instructed to vote against Illegal Migration Bill

The finer details of the Conservative's proposed new Illegal Migration Bill remain a little foggy, with the Prime Minister refusing to be drawn on questions about when he would stop small boat crossings, and whether trafficking victims who arrived via illegal means would be protected.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak formally unveiled their plans on Tuesday to remove and ban asylum seekers from re-entry if they arrive in the UK through illegal means. The Prime Minister had made a promise to the British people, that anyone entering the country illegally would be detained and "swiftly removed", and this Bill would fulfil that promise, Braverman said.

At the Prime Minister's question time on Wednesday, Sunak butted heads with opposition MPs, as he was grilled on the Government's track record on illegal immigration and on sending people found ineligible for asylum back.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer slammed the plans as nothing new, and said they have been tried before - and failed. “I voted against his legislation last time because I said it wouldn’t work, since it became law the numbers have gone up, he’s proved me right. The Prime Minister says they will detain people who aren’t eligible to claim asylum here and then return them. Well, they already tried that under the last legislation.”

Starmer said in 2022, 18,000 people were deemed ineligible to apply for asylum. Only 21 had actually been sent back, he claimed. “What happens to the rest? They sit in hotels and digs for months on end at the taxpayers’ expense.”

The Prime Minister answered: “We’ve actually got a clear plan to stop people coming here in the first place. Labour have absolutely no plan on this issue because they simply don’t want to tackle the problem.

“We introduced tougher sentences for people smugglers, they opposed it, we signed a deal with Rwanda, they opposed it, we are deporting foreign offenders as we speak, they oppose it… In fact, he opposed every single step of what we’ve done to try and stop this problem.”

How has the Bill been received?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission said: “We welcome the government’s intention to remain within the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). We are nonetheless concerned that the legislation risks breaching the UK’s legal obligations under the Refugee Convention and ECHR.”

The plan is simply “not the British way of doing things”, the Refugee Council said. Its chief executive Enver Solomon suggested the plans were “more akin to authoritarian nations” such as Russia and insisted the proposals would not stop desperate people crossing in small boats but would instead leave “traumatised people locked up in a state of misery being treated as criminals and suspected terrorists without a fair hearing on our soil”.

He said the new legislation “ignores the fundamental point that most of the people in small boats are men, women and children escaping terror and bloodshed from countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Syria”.

Labour and SNP ministers questioned the Tory’s hard-line approach and the sturdiness of the bill, as well as what would happen to migrants who could not be returned. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government did not have the necessary agreements in place to actually send asylum seekers back.

"They still don’t have any return agreements in place, the Home Secretary herself has admitted Rwanda is failing, and even if it gets going it’ll only take a few hundred people, so what will happen to the other 99% of people under this Bill?”

While fellow Conservatives seemed mostly onboard with the plan, many questioned what it would mean for Britain's membership in the European Convention on Human Rights, which had previously grounded attempts to send illegal migrants to Rwanda. Sunak said while they believed they were in line with international law, they were “up for the fight” if need be.

The new Bill has been criticised by human rights watchdogs like Amnesty International, the Church of Scotland, and even the United Nations. UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said it was “profoundly concerned”, as the legislation would extinguish the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, "no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be".

“Most people fleeing war and persecution are simply unable to access the required passports and visas…This would be a clear breach of the Refugee Convention and would undermine a longstanding humanitarian tradition of which the British people are rightly proud.”