Last night, the Government’s flagship Illegal Migration Bill passed its second reading with a majority of 62, comprising 312 ayes and 250 noes, and without a Conservative vote against. For a piece of legislation that has sent the BBC meltdown and attracted claims of ‘fascism, this was a triumph of party management.
Nonetheless, the debate preceding the vote provided a few straws in the wind for the potential hurdles the bill might face in the future. Tory critics of the bill – including Theresa May – chose to abstain rather than vote on the legislation. As an ex-Prime Minister and an ex-Home Secretary, May’s claim that the Bill will not deal with the issue “once and for all” clearly comes with extra weight. Her criticisms were three-fold.
First, she argued it would “shut the door” on those being brought into the UK for slavery since changes to the Modern Slavery Act might reduce the support available to them. She highlighted that nearly 90 per cent of claims under the act are found to be valid. Since the Modern Slavery Act was a major personal achievement of May’s during her time in office, one can obviously understand her defensiveness about her legacy.
She then went on to highlight that a “blanket dismissal” of asylum claims from illegal arrivals – with the obvious focus being on small boats – would remove routes for genuine asylum seekers fleeing persecution but without the means of accessing official channels, like a young woman from Iran. May then went on to detail the various hurdles the bill would have to jump, including legal challenges and the finding of capacity in Rwanda.
Summing up, May pointed out that whenever “you close a route for migrants, they and the people smugglers find another way and anybody who thinks that this bill will deal with the issue of illegal migration once and for all is wrong”. She cited her own experience of tackling illegal migrants entering the country via lorries at Calais, and pointed out that a larger problem than small boats was migrants overstaying their visas.
Her criticisms are of a different variety than those like Caroline Nokes, who has previously claimed the bill “made her sick” and also abstained. This is less moral repugnance, and more a former Home Secretary’s jaded musing that the migrant will always get through.
Yet May also made a pointed reference to “the reputation of the UK on the world stage” – something mirrored by Robert Buckland, who spoke later. The ex-Justice Secretary made clear his concerns about parts of the Bill which pertained to the detention of children – a common criticism from both sides of the House.
Nonetheless, his peroration focused on whether the bill was being used as a “battering ram” for attacking “the validity of the European convention”. We should not, he argued, “talk about the withdrawal from the convention that British Conservatives wrote”. His concerns were shared by Robert Neill, who argued against the Government pursuing a “kind of isolationist unilateralism” and argued the real problem is “the lamentable performance of our asylum and immigration systems”.
Although Buckland and Neill voted for the bill, similar concerns caused Chris Skidmore to abstain. May mentioned that Number 10 had offered to speak to her about her modern slavery concerns. One imagines similar conversations will now go on between Downing Street, the Home Office, and those worried about the bill’s impact on either detained children or our global reputation.
Of course, when an MP says “our global reputation”, what they are referencing is the challenge this bill poses to the ECHR. It is here that the most obvious battleground of the legislation’s next stage can be identified. This is opposition from those who believe – like Yuan Yi Zhu, our columnist – does not go far enough, and that a push to leave the ECHR is inevitable.
Brendan Clarke-Smith, William Cash, and Scott Benton were amongst those who mentioned the ECHR’s role as an impediment to action. Several also floated the prospect of leaving the convention if it continued to stand in the Government’s way. Clarke-Smith, for example, said the debate about “whether we stay or leave” is “for another time”, with priority being “to make this legislation work.”
An amendment pushing for this could cause a significant headache for ministers – especially if it won support from MPs like those for Mid-Bedfordshire and Uxbridge and South Ruislip, who did not vote at this Second Reading. The balancing act that Rishi Sunak must strike is between appearing reasonable enough to those MPs who are worried about our international obligations, and impatient enough to those who want to know he is serious about tackling the small boats.