The Bill would ban from claiming asylum anyone arriving in the UK through “irregular means”. People crossing the Channel would be detained for the first 28 days without bail. The Home Secretary would then have a duty to remove them – either to their country of origin or, if it’s deemed too dangerous, to a third country such as Rwanda. The same rules would apply to everyone: regardless if they’re fleeing a war zone, trying to join their only living relatives or if they’re a victim of modern slavery. In an effort to appear “tough”, the Tories are throwing some of the world’s most vulnerable people under the bus, and almost certainly breaching international human rights law in the process.
In reality, the biggest groups of Channel migrants come from highly unsafe countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan or Sudan, to which they cannot be removed. Rwanda has only agreed to accept 200 people from the UK, if the plan materialises at all. Therefore, if implemented, this Bill would result in tens of thousands of people stuck in limbo for years, languishing in detention centres, in hotels, barges or other temporary accommodation, with no right to work and no way to get on with their lives.
The Tories claim that their aim is to discourage people from taking dangerous, clandestine journeys. What they conveniently forget to mention is that, for the vast majority of refugees, there are no official ways to get to the UK. Safe routes are few and far between: there is the Homes for Ukraine scheme, and a visa programme for holders of British National (Overseas) passports in Hong Kong. On paper, the UK also has a scheme for people fleeing Afghanistan, but the number of refugees actually brought here is vanishingly small. As of February 2023, only 22 people had been resettled under the government’s Pathway 2, designed for vulnerable refugees. Meanwhile, 8,633 Afghans arrived last year in small boats.