In response to the Government’s Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill introduced today, Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, said:

“For the Government to choose to keep even small parts of the Illegal Migration Act is rank hypocrisy.

“As the Prime Minister and all who serve under him must know, human rights are for everyone not just your friends and they are for all times not just for when it suits.

“The Government must safeguard adults and children who’ve suffered the trauma of human trafficking, torture and war - not trample all over them out of political convenience.

“Keeping parts of this atrocious legislation signals a similar disdain for human beings and the rule of law so viscerally demonstrated by the last Government - particularly given it is the people most vulnerable to exploitation who are once again the target.”

A reversal of roles

Less than two years ago Yvette Cooper as Shadow Home Secretary stood in Parliament to oppose the Government’s Illegal Migration Act 2023 in its entirety, including because under it victims of modern-day slavery would be left without any protections as was expressly stated in the motion she moved from the opposition front bench when the Act received its Second Reading in the House of Commons (Hansard HC, 13 March 2023 : Col 582). Less than two years later, the bill she has today introduced fails to remove harmful provisions of the 2023 Act including section 29, which widens the exclusion, first created by the Nationality and Borders Act 2023, of victims of slavery and human trafficking from vital protections.