Illegal Migration Bill to become law after Lords challengeon July 18, 2023 at 2:11 am

The Illegal Migration Bill is set to become law after the government won a final series of votes in the Lords.

The legislation is central to the prime minister’s pledge to stop small boats crossing the English Channel.

Amendments by peers – such as child detention limits and modern slavery protections – had been overturned.

In a late-night debate in the House of Lords, the last of the proposed changes was voted down. This means the bill can go for royal assent.

For weeks, MPs were locked in a battle over the final shape of the bill with the Lords, where it had repeatedly been amended by opposition peers.

One such amendment would have ensured that the National Crime Agency gave reports on immigration crime operations every three months.

Peers voted to reject that by 201 peers to 166 on Monday, with a majority of 35.

Another – to provide safeguards to UK-based victims of modern slavery – was rejected by 205 to 193.

It called for the bill to ensure the provision of a 14-day grace period, allowing people to access support and co-operate with criminal proceedings against traffickers.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, who has been a critic of the bill, also dropped his demand for the government to draw up a 10-year strategy for collaborating internationally on refugees and human trafficking to the UK, after it was again rejected by MPs.

The end of the stand-off between peers and MPs paves the way for the bill to receive royal assent – when the King formally agrees to make the bill into an Act of Parliament, or law.

Backed by MPs in March, the bill is at the centre of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to end small boat Channel crossings.

During the Lords debate, Home Office minister Lord Murray of Blidworth said the number of small boat arrivals had “overwhelmed” the UK’s asylum system and that accommodation was costing taxpayers £6m per day.

“With over 45,000 people making dangerous Channel crossings last year this is simply no longer sustainable,” he told peers, adding it was “only right” that the “business model” of human traffickers be broken.

He urged the Lords to “respect the will of the elected House and the British people by passing this bill”.

The bill would place a legal duty on the government to detain and remove those arriving in the UK illegally, either to Rwanda or another “safe” third country.

The Rwanda plan was ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal last month, but ministers are challenging the judgement.

Before the debate, shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said the bill was “unworkable” and an exercise in “performative cruelty”.

He added that Rwanda would only be able to take a tiny fraction of the migrants arriving in small boats, meaning the threat of being deported there would not deter people from making the journey.