Following the announcement of the bill, this Valentines Day, together with members of Survivors Speak Out, One Strong Voice & Together with Refugees, we reminded Keir Starmer, that the majority of the UK do support compassionate policies.
What is Labour's new immigration Bill?
The government has just introduced their new immigration Bill. It scraps some of the worst Conservative laws, but other parts of the bill are worrying.
Keir Starmer’s "smash the gangs” approach puts torture survivors at risk by further criminalising those taking small boat crossings, instead of addressing the root causes of why people flee their homes. Find out what this Bill means for refugees.
What is in this new Bill?
The Labour Government have just introduced their ‘Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill’ to parliament.
This Bill is the fourth piece of immigration legislation introduced by a British government in as many years. Like the Acts of Parliament that precede it, it aims to tackle "irregular” migration and reduce small boat crossings, by targeting ‘organised crime groups’ and introducing counter-terror-style powers to ‘strengthen’ UK border security. And, much like those Acts, it will almost certainly fail to prevent the continued movement of desperate refugees but instead will make their journeys more dangerous and criminalise those who make it to our shores.
The new Bill also seeks to undo existing legislation (like the Illegal Migration Act) that blocked access to the UK asylum system, holding people seeking asylum in a state of indefinite limbo and preventing the effective functioning of the asylum system.
This is great news, but the Bill doesn’t go far enough to enable the Government to deliver on its ambition to restore order to our asylum system because it leaves in place many of the harmful anti-refugee laws introduced by previous governments. These need to go.
The good things about the Bill
It repeals cruel laws passed by the former Conservative governments. It scraps some of the worst bits of legislation introduced during the last five years.
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The bill repeals the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which is a massive victory for refugee rights campaigners.
Survivors of torture suffered under the threat of being sent to an unsafe country, and the harm it had on their mental health is profound and lasting.
The Act was unlawful and cruel. In a vital win for caring people across the country, we’re delighted the PM kept his promise to close the door on this ‘cash for humans’ scheme.
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The Bill also repeals sections of the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
This means the right to asylum is restored and claims for refugee protection can be progressed, preventing people being held in a lengthy limbo.
By scrapping these parts of the Act, the Government is seeking to remove everything that stood in the way of an efficient and effective functioning asylum system.
Keir’s ‘Smash the Gangs’ approach
One of the most worrying aspects of the bill is its focus on criminalisation rather than compassion and support for people who have come to the UK in search of safety.
Anyone who values their own rights to liberty and privacy should be alarmed by the introduction of yet further criminal offences and the proposal to use counter-terror style powers that will likely be applied to almost everyone who arrives by small boat.
These changes not only criminalise refugees seeking protection in the UK, but may well increase the risk that those refugees are returned to the torture they have fled.
This Bill continues to treat the forced displacement of refugees as a national security threat rather than a humanitarian and human rights crisis, and this is barely believable from a Government that champions the rule of law.
How does the Bill impact refugees and survivors?
This government has said this bill’s new powers of strengthening border security will work to “reduce small boat crossings and loss of life in the Channel”. However, from our work with survivors in our therapy rooms over the last 40 years, we know that it will instead further punish those people who have no choice but to put their own and their family members’ lives at risk on order to seek protection in the UK.
The bill creates the criminal offence of “endangering another during a sea crossing”: this offence is clearly aimed at the desperate people inside the boats, many of whom will be acting out of sheer terror or under the coercive power of smugglers. The Government has acknowledged that this will likely target parents who – in the absence of any safer route to sanctuary - bring their children on these dangerous journeys.
As we found in our Burning House report our clients who have made dangerous journeys like these, are fleeing torture and unimaginable horrors, including en route to the UK, and are ultimately trying to find safety for themselves and their children.
Punishing them for taking what they saw as the only option just repeats the anti-refugee approach that, over decades, has made the journeys more dangerous and the environment in the UK more hostile. And it ignores the glaring reality that, in the absence of more accessible safe routes to sanctuary, refugees will continue to risk their lives to cross borders in search of protection.
What needs to change
This Bill puts forward some well needed changes to the asylum system but is far from being the system-wide reform that we need to see for a compassionate, effective and fair asylum process for torture survivors.
We are calling for a number of changes:
1. The Illegal Migration Act 2023 should be scrapped in its ENTIRETY.
t makes no sense that an Immigration Bill seeking to restore order and efficiency has kept elements of the law that make it almost impossible to register an asylum or human rights claim if you come from a country like Albania, India or Georgia, with a recognised poor human rights record.
2. More of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 needs TO GO too.
This immigration Bill fails to scrap parts of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 - aka the Anti-Refugee Act - which stop refugees getting a fair hearing and put people at risk of return to torture and persecution.
3. We need to see REAL fairness and compassion in the asylum system
Rooted in the expertise of torture survivors – we’ve created a six-point plan for a fairer and more compassionate asylum system. This manifesto is a call to all political parties, as well as this current Labour Government, to work with organisations like ours to make our asylum system a compassionate and fair one.
What you can do to help us
At Freedom from Torture, we’re doing everything we can to work towards a compassionate and welcoming asylum system that supports torture survivors to heal and rebuild their lives. But we need your support:
Donate to support our work: Please consider donating to help us keep fighting for a fairer asylum system, and to provide survivors of torture with therapy and to support
Join the movement: We will continue to campaign alongside survivors against the cruelty of this bill. To stay up to date with the latest ways to take action, sign up to our email list now.
Banner image credit: Denis Charlet / Getty Images
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