Braverman's asylum ban must be binned
Less than a year since the Nationality and Borders Act - which aimed to deter ‘illegal’ entry to the UK via small boats crossing the Channel - became law, the Government have introduced the even more punitive and inhumane Illegal Migration Bill with the same aim.
It will mean that anyone - not just those arriving by boat - who tries to claim asylum, having passed through a third ‘safe’ country even just in transit, will have their claim treated as permanently inadmissible. This means they have no right to have their claim heard.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, will then have a duty to arrange for their removal, backed up by extensive indefinite detention powers. However, with very limited removal agreements in place, the Refugee Council warns that this is likely to mean tens of thousands of people stuck in limbo and potentially facing destitution.
In effect the Bill constitutes an ‘asylum ban’ to quote the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Its effect will be both retrospective, affecting anyone who has arrived on or since the 7 March 2023, when the Bill was introduced, and permanent in that all future attempts to enter the country or to gain citizenship will also be banned.
This ban applies to any close family member. Moreover it deprives any child of a parent affected of rights to citizenship they might otherwise have under British law. This has been described by the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium as ‘a fundamentally discriminatory approach to citizenship’.
It is but one example of how children, who have made up approximately a fifth of those applying for asylum over the past decade, stand to be harmed by the Bill. The Children’s Commissioner has raised profound concerns about the Bill’s implications for children and has criticised the failure to provide pre-legislative scrutiny or a child rights impact assessment.
Although the Secretary of State has a power rather than a duty to remove unaccompanied children, that power turns into a duty once the child turns 18. Leaving aside the many problems associated with the age assessment of children, who can be wrongly assessed as adults, this leaves unaccompanied children, many of whom will already have been traumatised, living a life of insecurity with likely damaging effects on their mental health.
It is also highly likely that they will simply disappear shortly before reaching 18, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation as the Children’s Commissioner has warned.
The Children’s Commissioner has also warned that the Bill is likely to significantly increase the detention of children. In doing so, it overturns a 2010 commitment from the Conservative-led government, then enshrined in the 2014 Immigration Act, to limit child detention.
It will now be lawful to detain children indefinitely despite the earlier evidence of the long-lasting damage that detention has on children’s physical and mental health. The Bill also overturns the 72 hour time limit on the detention of pregnant women introduced in the 2016 Immigration Act – again ignoring the earlier evidence of the likely harmful health effects.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the agency responsible for the international protection of refugees, makes clear that the Bill is inconsistent with the UK’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ‘because of the many ways it threatens or undermines the safety and welfare of children’.
The Home Secretary’s dismissal as fatuous claims that the Bill breaches more general refugee convention obligations does not stand up in the face of the UN agency’s devastating legal critique.
The agency also makes clear that talk of more safe and legal routes is not underpinned by any provision in the Bill, which on the contrary would place an annual cap on the numbers admitted through safe and legal routes.
And while an increase in the number of refugees allowed in through such routes is much needed, and without delay, the agency is adamant that they can never substitute for the right to claim asylum.
This may be called the Illegal Migration Bill in line with the false claim that desperate people who cross the Channel in boats are economic migrants but Refugee Council analysis of official data indicates that six out of ten of those who crossed the Channel in 2022 would be recognised as refugees.
In contrast, the Home Office has been unable to provide evidence to back its representation of them as economic migrants. What is at stake is the fundamental human right to claim asylum when fleeing conflict or oppression.
Baroness Ruth Lister is the former Director of the Child Poverty Action Group and currently its Hon President; Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, Loughborough University and Labour peer.
