The problem with the government’s illegal migration bill is not just that it is inhumane and unworkable. It is that the inhumanity and unworkability look calculated. They are not simply bugs of the project; they may even be features.
The government has said it will return all those who enter the UK via small boats or dispatch them to a third country – though Rwanda has not yet received one person in exchange for its pocketing of £120m. It remains to be seen whether Rishi Sunak’s meeting with Emmanuel Macron on Friday will lead to arrangements for returns to France. To save money, tens of thousands of people could be warehoused in mass detention camps. The home secretary, Suella Braverman, says modern slavery rules will not prevent removals.
If the aim was truly to cut costs to taxpayers and save lives by curbing dangerous small boat crossings, there would be two obvious places to start. The first would be to tackle the sclerotic Home Office bureaucracy, where mismanagement and inadequate resources have created a logjam. Across Europe, only Germany had a larger backlog in 2021, and it received more than three times as many applications. The second would be to expand safe, legal routes for asylum seekers, instead of slashing them. Ms Braverman said such routes would be created – but only once the boats were stopped, and with arrivals capped. At least three-fifths of those who crossed the Channel last year were likely to have their claims granted. Small boat arrivals include Afghans, who were promised help.
There is no legal requirement for people to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach. The government’s own actions are of questionable legality, as it has acknowledged. It has briefed that there will be a “brake” on rights, raising the question of how it can avoid obligations under the European convention on human rights. Ms Braverman has admitted that there is a more than 50% chance that the bill’s provisions may be incompatible with the convention – meaning they are likely to fail in court.
The Conservatives have a long record of gimmicky, unrealisable pledges to halt irregular migration. But the bill will allow them to say that they “got tough” but were obstructed by the courts and Labour – positioning themselves as representing the will of the people against elite institutions and the soft-touch left (never mind that the public appear to take a more nuanced view on asylum and migration). Mr Sunak can sell himself to the Tory right as not just a technocrat but a man “taking back control” and facing down “spurious human rights claims”. It might help the party get through May’s local elections, and dent Labour afterwards, despite the dismal state of the economy and public services.
That Ms Braverman’s vision is unrealisable makes her rhetoric no less sinister and damaging. She claimed: “By some counts there are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let’s be clear: they are coming here.” This is a dangerous nonsense. The majority of these are displaced domestically; three-quarters of the rest are hosted by low and middle income countries. Britain has taken a tiny fraction and seen fewer asylum applications than at their 2002 peak. Even where it boasts of generosity, it has fallen short; as of last summer, it had taken in fewer Ukrainians per capita than all but one of 28 European countries.
Across Europe, the right has seized upon and demonised migration and asylum. As the targeting of asylum seekers surges, with far-right groups attacking the hotels where they are housed, the government’s playbook is not only callous but dangerous and inflammatory. Its legislation must be opposed in political and humanitarian terms, as well as pragmatic ones.
