After a long battle, the government’s Illegal Immigration Bill is receiving Royal Assent, bringing a new level of inhumanity to the UK’s ‘hostile environment’.
We’re publishing an interview with Care4Calais founder Clare Mosley, which was filmed by a volunteer a few months ago. In it she dispels many of the myths which are promoted by right-wing newspapers, media outlets and the current bunch of unelected politicians.
In the video, Clare refers to the abhorrent Nationality and Borders Act, but now the government has pushed though even more depraved legislation, so much so that the UN High Commissioner has already urged the UK to reverse this law, saying that it “exposes refugees to grave risks in breach of international law”.
Human rights groups, lawyers, and NGOs criticise the speed with which the Illegal Immigration Act was pushed through Parliament. By not allowing time for proper scrutiny, as well as granting a swathe of secondary legislative powers by-passing the usual constitutional safeguards, it undermines Parliamentary sovereignty.
Many of the powers granted by the Illegal Immigration Act also risk breaching international laws and treaties, including the Refugee Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, as well as UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child, Reduction of Statelessness and Status of Stateless Persons.
The express purpose of the Act (to remove certain people from the UK) is set out in a way which overrides human rights for a certain group of people, undermining equality before the law and universality of human rights.
Delegating power to make new law through secondary legislation, the government is undermining the UK judiciary. Rushing through the Bill, preventing proper scrutiny and overriding the Lords, the government is undermining Parliament. So by seizing the roles of lawmaker, adjudicator and administrator, the government is trampling over the long-established and democratically essential Separation of Powers.
The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish administrations are all supposed to comply with human rights obligations, and their local authorities have duties in child care and in supporting victims of trafficking. The Act will impinge on these responsibilities and even threaten aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, which supposedly guarantees that everyone in the community should have equal and direct access to the courts to seek remedies for breach of the Human Rights Convention.
Research by the Refugee Council suggests that nearly 200,000 people could be locked up or forced into destitution, including tens of thousands of children, and the scheme may cost around £9 billion over three years.
By not increasing safe and legal ways to apply for asylum, almost all refugees arriving in the UK will be deemed inadmissible because they passed through a country they were not fleeing. The Home Office’s own research shows there is little evidence that asylum seekers are generally aware of asylum policy, so the new law won’t remove the legitimate reasons that people take the dangerous journeys here, and so won’t even ‘stop the boats’.
The plan to forcibly remove refugees to Rwanda is still in legal limbo. The Court of Appeal ruling at the end of June will likely be challenged by the government at the Supreme Court, but despite calls from lawyers for the government to process claims, torture survivors from countries such as Iran, Eritrea, Sudan and Syria are left facing uncertainty. The current CEO of Care4Calais, Steve Smith, says there are tens of thousands of asylum seekers (many already traumatised survivors of modern slavery or torture) whose claims are simply on hold with no review while the government fights the courts.
And while the world faces unprecedented heatwaves on three continents, which will inevitably lead to droughts, crop failures, starvation and migration, the government has just built its first prison ship for people fleeing the avoidable global catastrophe that rich nations are inflicting through continued oil, coal and gas extraction.
