Many of us are watching the progress of the appalling Illegal Immigration Bill as it makes its way through the Houses. On Wednesday it reached the Lords for a second reading, and there were some barnstorming speeches from Lib Dem peers. Here are some extracts.

Brian Paddick moved an amendment that would have effectively killed the Bill immediately.

My Lords, Trevor Phillips recently wrote in the Times that, in 2000, 175 million people lived outside the country of their birth and that, by 2020, it was 280 million. He likened the Prime Minister’s pledge to “stop the boats” to King Canute ordering back the incoming tide. He argued that we need to bring order to the flow, rather than focusing on the impossible task of locking the doors to keep asylum seekers out. We agree.

We have yawning gaps in our labour markets that refugees could fill. We believe that we should adopt the approach many other countries are adopting, that responsibility should be taken away from the Home Office and given to the Foreign Office or the Department for Business and Trade and that “Migration is no job for a home secretary”. Phillips agrees. We should be harnessing the power of the incoming tide, not refusing to accept that it cannot be stopped.

The Government talk about “pull factors”. We talk about “push” factors: the intolerable conditions in their home countries that compel asylum seekers to find sanctuary elsewhere in the world. Even in detention in the UK, you do not have to worry about where you are going to live, how you are going to survive without adequate food or water, or whether you are going to be killed or persecuted, or otherwise have your life endangered. Can the Minister say what evidence the Government have that the measures in the Bill will deter small boat crossings?

…

The Bill seeks systematically to deny human rights to a group of people desperately seeking sanctuary. It would breach our international obligations under the UN conventions on refugees, on the rights of the child and on the reduction of statelessness, and the European convention against trafficking. This is the first, but not the only, Bill that explicitly states that it does not have to be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Human Rights Act is being revoked, one law at a time. The Bill would undermine the rule of law, with Ministers able to ignore the rulings of judges. At the same time, we are asking Russia and China to abide by the international rule of law.

I have one final thought. I studied moral philosophy at university. One of the acid tests of whether something was morally right was the question: “What would happen if everyone did the same thing?” Can the Minister say what would happen if every country adopted the approach outlined in the Bill?

This Bill is a low point in the history of this Government and we should not allow it to proceed any further. I beg to move.

Paul Scriven followed Alf Dubs, who was himself a child refugee, saved from the Nazis on the Kindertransport:

My Lords, what an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who is a living example of what happens when a country opens its hearts to refugees and how those people can then settle here and contribute to the future prosperity of the nation that they make their home.

…

As well as impractical and inhumane, the Bill is ineffective. It is built on the ridiculous premise that the only way to stop the traffickers profiteering is to criminalise their vulnerable victims and treat them in a subhuman way. The Bill undermines our commitment to international law and our obligations under the UN conventions on refugees and the child, and it degrades what it means to be British. It trashes our proud and long-held values and our record, dating back to 1951, on how we deal with those seeking asylum. It undermines our country’s international standing for upholding and abiding by international law.

Susan Kramer, the daughter of a refugee, was particularly scathing about the language used around this subject:

My Lords, I decided to speak today after reading the words of the Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, speaking for the Government to Policy Exchange, demonising migrants and failing to recognise our responsibilities to refugees seeking asylum. He said that “excessive, uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise the compassion of the British public”.

“Cannibalise”—what a deliberate and demonising choice of word. He went on: “And those crossing tend to have completely different lifestyles … to those in the UK … undermining the cultural cohesiveness”.

It was deliberately divisive language and certainly not borne out by the UK experience.

…

I want the Minister today to show me the body of evidence and research that shows how British compassion has been “cannibalised” by asylum seekers and by people like my mother and me. I want to see his evidence of damage to cohesion that genuine asylum seekers, never mind migrants, have inflicted on the UK. I suspect that we will find it has no substance. He needs to show why diversity is a weakness not a strength. Ironically, if the Government continue to argue that migration creates such problems, it should never by its own logic return a single refugee to any country that already has a significant migrant population—and that eliminates most of Europe and indeed Africa, including Rwanda.

Mike German gave us a case to think about:

I illustrate … through the story of Linh, who was trafficked into the United Kingdom at the age of 15. She was discovered by police in the back of a lorry. Social services placed her with a foster family, where it was discovered that Linh was five months pregnant, having been raped by her traffickers. Fortunately, Linh was able to move in with the foster family and give birth to her son. Under this Bill, Linh would not be able to use her status as a victim of human trafficking to challenge her removal. Even if Linh had passed through a safe country, she could not have claimed asylum there because she was held prisoner by her trafficker. Under this Bill, Linh would not be able to make a new life in the United Kingdom for her and her son. Moreover, the hand of Linh’s captor would have been strengthened by this Bill. They would have threatened that, if she tried to escape and contact the authorities, she would be removed from the United Kingdom rather than be provided with safety. The Illegal Migration Bill would serve the interests of Linh’s captors rather than secure her rights.

Sarah Ludford raised a rueful smile:

There is little mirth to be had on the grim subject of this shabby, illegal and immoral Bill, but I did allow myself a little smile this last weekend. The chasing of easy headlines through divisive, dehumanising and xenophobic rhetoric about invasions by migrants and their threat to “our” values did not pay the electoral dividend the Conservatives were hoping for, despite claims that they are “the will of the people”. In fact, the symbolic district of Dover delivered them a big rebuff when turfing Tories out of control in favour of Labour, which I congratulate.

…

In his recent letter to us, the Minister said of his inability to make a statement that the provisions of the Bill are compatible with convention rights: “This does not mean that the provisions in the Bill are incompatible with the Convention rights. A section 19(1)(b) statement simply means we are unable to say decisively that this Bill is compatible with the ECHR … Indeed, the Government is satisfied that the provisions of the Bill are capable of being applied compatibly with those rights”.

He should have been a scriptwriter for Monty Python.

Barbara Janke focussed on the shame:

My Lords, as the previous speaker has said, this Bill brings shame on our country. The UK was once one of the most compassionate countries, welcoming victims of oppression and violence, upholding human rights and championing the causes of the oppressed. The British public have shown their generosity in welcoming war victims.

…

As areas of conflict increase across the world, the numbers of people seeking sanctuary from violence and persecution are massively increasing. Yet the UK, claiming to be an influential global player on the world stage, is unwilling to take its share of responsibility for finding solutions to the worsening humanitarian plight of so many people fleeing conflict.

Roger Roberts was angry about the detention of children:

The reason that some years ago I supported the Conservative-Liberal coalition was the pledge that the imprisonment and detention of children on immigration purposes would be abolished. Now, the possibility of that is to be reintroduced.

The Government will say that this is what the British people want. Thursday’s local government election, with over 1,000 Tory losses, shows that there is no great clamour for the sort of action proposed, which is aggressive and inhumane. The Home Secretary dreams of planes deporting refugees to Rwanda. I believe this is not a dream shared by the majority of the British people, who are more likely to dream as Martin Luther King did of justice and fairness for all people. Once again, not a single Tory councillor was elected in many of our larger cities—none in Liverpool, Manchester or Newcastle. You may say, “What about the places most affected by the people in small boats?” On the south coast, the Tories were down five councillors in Dover and more than that in Folkestone. The people do not want this.

The Coronation concert showed how much we appreciate the diversity of those from many different backgrounds. This Bill has no place in the law of the United Kingdom. I am certain that every concerned Peer in the House today will join me this evening in opposing this squalid Bill.

Shas Sheehan spoke from first-hand experience of the Calais Jungle:

I will address the Minister’s introduction to the Bill, when he stated that, if the Bill is to be effective as a deterrent, the extreme measures in it are necessary. So the Bill is, very clearly, the Government’s response to address their often-stated, firmly-held belief that, in the argument of pull versus push factors in the reasons for migration, the pull factor is most relevant. In short, the Government believe that people risk life and limb, of themselves and their families, and get into flimsy boats to the UK without serviceable life jackets because the pull factors of life in the UK are irresistible.
…
What we do know, however, from sector analysis, partly based, in fact, on the Home Office’s own data, is that more than two-thirds of people who cross the channel in small boats are judged to be genuine refugees and, on appeal, are allowed to remain—contradicting a government claim that 70% of small boats arrivals “are not genuine asylum seekers”.

…

I spent a lot of time in the Calais Jungle before it was demolished and burned to the ground in 2016. The people I met there, mostly from Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria, had no other thought than to get to the UK. They had overcome unbelievable odds to reach the English Channel and they would not be defeated now that they were within sight of its shores. Their logic was simple. The smugglers were the ones they trusted, because they wanted to help them in their aim; the French were their enemy, because they wanted to stop them, often quite brutally; Britain, in contrast, they believed, wanted them. What were they supposed to believe, when each DfID—as was, now FCDO—sack, box or pallet is emblazoned with a union jack and the words “UK Aid”, ensuring all recipients knew whom to thank for their charity?

Sal Brinton was concerned about the health provision for asylum seekers:

Given the worrying nature of the Section 4 support under this Bill, can the Minister assure your Lordships’ House that basic but proper healthcare will be provided to prevent a repetition of last autumn, when Suella Braverman stopped the dispersal of asylum seekers from the Manston and Jet Foil centres? The Minister will remember well that, as they became overcrowded and diphtheria and scabies spread rapidly, it became clear that there were not adequate health resources—until there was a major crisis and a public scandal.

This should not have been a surprise. The Home Secretary was warned of this months earlier in the Chief Inspector of Prisons’ unannounced inspection report, which said: “Governance of health care processes was weak … The care pathway lacked coordination or clinical leadership and there were no policies, protocols or governance of clinical standards.”

Can the Minister assure your Lordships’ House that this will never happen again?

…

To turn now to the health of children, it is well documented that children seeking asylum are likely to face the worst childhood experiences possible, including physical and sexual violence, persecution, torture, exploitation, separation from parents and even witnessing parental death. In the Lancet, experts in child and adolescent health said: “Rather than supporting these children, the UK’s new migration policies could cause further harm. The Illegal Migration Bill will violate the rights of children seeking asylum, undermine the Children Act, create safeguarding risks, and exacerbate the toxic stress experienced by children seeking asylum who arrive in the UK by irregular routes. As a signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UK risks reneging on its commitment.”

Jeremy Purvis focussed on international aid:

Globally, at the end of 2022 there were 101 million forcibly displaced people around the world, the majority of whom are internally displaced within their own country —support for whom the UK has slashed its humanitarian assistance to by up to 60%. The global figure for those seeking asylum is 4.9 million; they are still not coming here. But the 1% who are seeking it come here against a narrative which, as my noble friend Lady Kramer so eloquently pointed out, states that they have values that are at odds with ours or that they will cannibalise our society. Now we are being asked to ban claims of asylum because of the method of their arrival rather than the merits of their claim.

…

I want to raise something not yet mentioned in the debate. In the 1990s, the UK opposed scoring in-country support for refugees as overseas development assistance, but this is allowed for under ODA rules. Ten years ago, this was a negligible amount. In 2021 it made up 9% of all UK ODA. ICAI estimates that now this is one-third, because the Government—unique among all developed nations—are scoring all domestic support under overseas development assistance. This means that we are now, for the first time, spending more overseas aid in the UK than on bilateral programmes addressing the root causes of the issues that we have been debating today. Because of the unlawful 0.5% cuts, this is now capped.

Finally, Sally Hamwee summed it all up:

The Minister wrote to Peers, saying: “As you will know, over 45,000 people illegally crossed the Channel in small boats last year, abusing our laws and asylum protections”.

No, I do not know that 45,000 people did that, but I do know that this is victim blaming. I acknowledge Refugees Welcome and other support groups and individuals, who see asylum seekers as people in need of support.

…

The Bill is misconceived. It will not act as a deterrent to asylum seekers, so it will not deter the traffickers. It will create a new market for smugglers among people removed to countries which are not appropriate.

The Modern Slavery Act should be strengthened, not weakened. In January, changes were introduced to address false slavery claims by bringing into force the Nationality and Borders Act, but it is far too soon to assess those changes. Allowing a victim to remain in the UK just so long as is necessary for a prosecution says a good deal about the Government’s refusal, against professional opinion, to understand that few victims are able to produce a complete statement without considerable support and often over a long period. How is that trauma-informed?

…

Finally, perhaps the most egregious aspect of the Bill is that it deprives people of hope, and hope is so precious. My own default mode is to look for compromise and consensus, but I cannot do so here. I feel contaminated by the Bill.

Needless to say Brian Paddick’s amendment was defeated, so the Bill will continue to make its ugly progress through Westminster.

* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.