THE Government’s Illegal Migration Bill, announced last week, “amounts to cruelty without purpose”, the Archbishop of York said on Sunday. Several Conservative MPs have expressed misgivings about the plans.
Speaking to The Observer, Archbishop Cottrell said that Christians were “morally bound to find ways of welcoming the stranger and feeding the hungry. This does not mean anything goes, but it does mean everyone counts.
“Of course, there have to be limits on the numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers any one country can take. But this needs to be managed in a just, transparent, and humane way. Criminalising the world’s most vulnerable people is an immoral and inept way of responding.”
The Archbishop said that the Bill was not only “clearly unworkable, but will restrict access to support for many legitimate refugees and victims of modern slavery, without even the dignity of having their case heard”.
The Bill was met with widespread condemnation, including from C of E Bishops, charities, aid agencies, and the United Nations, when it was announced last Tuesday by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman (News, 8 March). It passed its First Reading in the House of Commons on Monday evening, despite criticism from prominent Conservative backbenchers.
On Sunday, a former junior minister for immigration, the Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, said that she would not support the Bill. She told Times Radio: “I am deeply troubled at the prospect of a policy which seeks to criminalise children, pregnant women, families, and remove them to Rwanda.”
Immigrants who enter the country illegally would be banned from seeking asylum in the UK under the terms of the Bill, which instead requires their deportation to their home country or a “safe” alternative.
The voting on the Bill was divided along party lines. No Conservative MPs rebelled, although almost 50 — including Ms Nokes — abstained.
During the debate, the former Prime Minister Theresa May said: “I understand the pressures to deal with illegal migration,” but “anybody who thinks that this Bill will deal with illegal migration once and for all is wrong.”
She said that the new law would enact a “blanket dismissal of anyone who is facing persecution and finds their way to the UK, but illegally”, and that “someone fleeing for their life will, more often than not, be unable to access a legal route.”
During her time as Home Secretary, Mrs May brought in the Modern Slavery Act. On Tuesday, she said: “Nobody wants to see our world-leading legislation being abused, but the Government have to set out the clear evidence if they are saying that there is a link between that Act and the small boats, and so far I have not seen that evidence.”
In a Twitter post outlining the Bill last Tuesday, Rishi Sunak wrote that people who entered the country illegally “can’t benefit from our modern slavery protections”.
Mrs May told the House of Commons: “As it stands, we are shutting the door on victims who are being trafficked into slavery here in the UK. . . The Home Office knows that the Bill means that genuine victims of modern slavery will be denied support.”
On Tuesday, the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales released a document, Love the Stranger. It sets out 24 principles “guiding our response to migrants and refugees”.
This includes a recognition that “efforts to tackle trafficking and slavery must therefore go beyond more active law enforcement; we also need to support people to flourish in their homelands, establish more safe routes for migrants and refugees, and work to eliminate the demand for those services that slave labour continues to meet”.
On Friday, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Revd Mark Strange, criticised the policy, and the language with which it was announced. “In the years since I was first elected as Bishop, I have seen a definite shift in how politicians respond to the challenges that arise when groups of people, fleeing war, genocide, famine, and other dangerous situations arrive in the UK,” he said.
“When I first became Bishop, the language of ‘blocking’ refugees, of ‘sending them back’ was restricted to small groups who blamed many of society’s issues on immigration. In 2023, that language is now present at the heart of government.”
Bishop Strange urged the Government to reconsider the policy, saying: “This Bill is not merciful. It is not kind, and it does not solve any issues. It denies the basic human rights of our neighbours and ships the problem off to other countries. It is a cruel and shameful response to people urgently seeking sanctuary and hope.”
A joint statement from the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church, which has been made available for other church leaders to sign, had gathered more than 1000 signatures by Tuesday morning, including Anglican and RC clergy.
The statement says that the new law is “completely incompatible with our Christian conviction that all human beings are made in the image of God, and are therefore inherently worthy of treatment which honours their dignity. . . If ever there was a contemporary example of ignoring our neighbour and walking by on the other side, this is it.”