THIS week, the Tory Party’s horrific anti-migrant Bill is in its second stage in Parliament — and it is truly frightening that such an appalling piece of legislation is progressing at lightning speed, with this second reading, a mere six days after it was introduced.

This is less than a year after the last significant changes under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, yet there has been no public consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny.

The Illegal Migration Bill is yet another step toward Britain effectively becoming a rogue state. The document begins with an admission by Home Secretary Suella Braverman that her legislation is not compatible with Britain’s human rights obligations and international law.

Braverman has tried to blur the truth by claiming in her introductory statement to the Bill that she is “unable” to say it conforms to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but it is very clear that if the government’s lawyers had told her that it did or even might, she would be trumpeting it — yet despite this admission, she says she wants MPs to go along with it anyway, accomplices in a pre-planned breach of international law.

The ECHR is often misrepresented by the Tories and their media allies as if it was imposed on us by the EU to protect criminals and restrict our freedoms — but the fact is that it was drafted by Britain and protects the rights of my constituents in Leicester East and of every one of us.

The Bill is not just frightening for refugees, but for all of us, because it sets a precedent that the government can simply choose to derogate our human rights — and can do so with almost no route to legal challenge, as the Bill is worded to put the government above the law, even when it “screws up.”

Not even children are safe. If the Bill becomes law, the Home Secretary doesn’t have to deport unaccompanied children under the terms of the new legislation — but is free to choose to do so anyway.

This is monstrous legislation and there are no assurances from the Conservative government that they’ll protect child refugees, even if they’re not obliged to.

And don’t be fooled, while the government disguises the Bill under its dog-whistle “stop the boats” slogan, this legislation is designed to give the government the power to pick and choose which people, from which countries and regions can apply for asylum at all — whether they come by boat or not.

This is racist legislation. While people from Ukraine receive an open invitation, other regions are left with no legal or “safe route” to come to Britain, and this Bill seeks to make sure they never do.

The Bill will render refugees automatically ineligible for asylum if they arrive here without having obtained permission beforehand and apply for asylum — and surely nobody is foolish enough to think the Tories will issue that permission to all cultures and geographies equally.

So, a person escaping danger by obtaining, for example, a tourist visa who applies for asylum on arrival, is already disqualified.

This gives the government an effective veto. If the Conservative government doesn’t want asylum-seekers from Syria, for example, then they simply don’t give them permission to come and apply — and anyone who gets here by any other means is ineligible before they even arrive.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) agrees with this assessment, going as far as to say that the Bill stops all asylum claims in Britain. Ironically, in the Bill, the Tories point a finger at other nations who are signatories to the human rights convention but are “derogating” their responsibilities — in a Bill in which the Home Secretary admits she wants Britain to derogate its obligations.

The government has even worded the Bill to put those it categorises as ineligible outside existing British asylum legislation. The Bill makes it a duty to deport potential victims of torture who arrive in Britain through irregular means, even if they are too vulnerable to be deported.
A declaration of ineligibility does not count as a refused application, so any right of appeal that refugees would have had against bad decisions on asylum applications is eliminated, except in extremely limited circumstances with a very high legal bar.

And that’s not the only part of this legislation with no right of appeal. The Bill gives the government the right to detain people for up to 28 days without appeal or permission to apply for immigration bail — and even if the government is found to have acted wrongly, the wording rules that out as a reason for the courts to find it acted beyond its powers.

It’s clear, on an honest reading, that the Bill is an attack on internationally protected legal rights — and that should worry the people of this country as much as those from elsewhere.

From Braverman’s admission that it doesn’t comply with our treaty obligations, the Bill goes on to explicitly state that its purpose is to exclude certain human rights entitlements from the asylum process.

The Bill is also a move by the government to put itself and its agents above the law — something else that should worry us all. As the Bill makes clear, even errors in detention decisions are “not liable to be questioned… in court.”

“The powers of the immigration officer or the Secretary of State are not to be regarded as having been exceeded by reason of any error made in reaching the decision… no application for judicial review may be made.”

Thus, the Bill prevents a judge from making an order in a judicial review claim to prevent a potentially unlawful deportation.

Thirteen years of successive Conservative governments have already attacked the foundations of human rights in this country, targeting both our rights to protest and to withdraw our labour. While this Bill is directed at asylum seekers, in essence, it’s a continuation of the ongoing assault on the rights of every person in this country.

The “stop the boats” slogan serves to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment and discourage some people from looking more closely at the details: in reality, we will all be harmed by this law.

The late, great Tony Benn famously said that we should watch how a government treats refugees because it’s how it will treat British citizens if it can get away with it. Now the Tories are trying to get away with it — and we’re seeing the government attacking refugees as a means of eroding the rights of British citizens as well.

This government wants to ignore international and human rights law to set the stage for a wider assault on all of us. If the Tories succeed, they will exploit this Bill as a precedent. If they can set aside human rights in one instance, they can do so again and again in wider and wider settings.

Far from protecting the people of Britain, the Bill will dangerously undermine the rights and protections on which we rely.

Britain is already on a slide towards fascism and to becoming a failed state: this nation’s political class is corrupt, and the vast majority of the media are neither able nor willing to hold those in power to account, instead of parroting government lines and amplifying state propaganda.

With the so-called Illegal Migration Bill, the Tories are steepening the slope and greasing the surface, so we slide faster still — and without even the imperfect protection of the judicial system to impede them. We must oppose it.

Claudia Webbe MP for Leicester East — follow her on Twitter @ClaudiaWebbe.