Dear Editor,

TODAY’S committee stage of the Illegal Migration Bill (IMB) in the House of Commons broadcast on Parliament TV exposed the incompetence of the Conservative government in its snail paced handling of asylum seekers arriving in the UK.

Labour’s Stephen Kinnock MP made the case that the backlog of asylum cases of 166,000 is more than 8 times larger than that handed over by Labour in 2010, a figure confirmed by the UK Statistics Authority. Most telling, Kinnock highlighted the fact that the IMB does not even mention the backlog!

Conservatives Sir Iain Duncan and former Home Secretary Theresa May made powerful arguments that the IMB will undermine Modern Slavery laws rather than improve them. May also said that identifying and prosecuting people traffickers and the slave drivers will be negated by victims being removed from our shores before those victims gain the confidence to give evidence against their slave masters.

Indeed, the whole process of identifying victims of modern slavery is broken. As Labour’s Jess Phillips pointed out the delay in identifying a victim of modern slavery has risen to 553 days against a Home Office target of 45 days. This adds to the time people have to spend in hotels and detention centres. UK.Gov data on modern slavery shows in the first quarter of 2022 there were 3,675 reasonable grounds decisions issued, with positive reasonable grounds decisions at 90% for adult and 89% for child potential victims. The proportion of positive decisions has remained relatively similar in recent years, with around nine out of every ten referrals receiving a positive decision.

The SNP’s spokesperson Alison Thewliss made the case that pregnant asylum seekers are being treated poorly  and the new IMB  will not improve matters. Labour’s Florence Eshalomi stated that the treatment of children under the IMB was “inhumane” and failed to provide the care and support they needed. Labour’s Stella Creasey and the LibDem spokesperson Alistair Carmichael deplored the use of incarcerating children in detention. 

Overall, in the debate there was consensus that the rights of modern slavery victims to remain here must be ensured through amendments to the IMB. Furthermore, numerous speakers in the debate highlighted the fact that Parliament has not seen the government’s impact assessments and cost implications of the IMB.

Before accepting the views of local Conservatives on this subject, remember that their party have been in government for 13 years and have broken the asylum system. The Home Office have sat on their hands in dealing with the backlog of cases. Now, with the IMB, the Conservatives attempt to divert attention from their failures with a bill that will breach international law on refugees. Don’t fall for their confidence trick. The clue is in their name:  CONservatives.