Good morning. MPs will debate the illegal migration bill for the final time today before it goes to the Lords. The report stage debate is where significant amendments get passed and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has already tabled amendments to make the bill even more draconian (and potentially even more incompatible with international law), as a concession to the Tory right. (Concession is probably the wrong word; Braverman is the Tory right, and although Rishi Sunak may have needed some persuading to accept these, she didn’t.) The key one would allow the government to ignore interim injunctions from the European court of human rights (like the one used to block the first flight carrying migrants to Rwanda).
Conservative “moderates” have also been pushing for their own amendments to the bill. They have having less sucess with the Home Office, but in some respects they are in a better negotiating position than the anti-migrant hardliners. (If the “moderates” line up with the opposition, they could defeat the government; but hardliners don’t have parliamentary allies, and can’t win votes without government support.) Ministers may offer them somthing later. As Eleni Courea writes in the London Playbook briefing, two amendments are being discussed.
The government was tied up in talks yesterday over two amendments, one by Tim Loughton (with 22 Tory names next to it) seeking to restrict the detention of unaccompanied children, and one by Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May (with 10 Tory names) to exempt migrants who have suffered exploitation in the U.K. Rebels make the point that the Sudan crisis underlines the importance of a compassionate policy toward refugees.
You can read all the amendments that have been tabled for debate today here.
Normally governments pass legislation because they want to change the law, but sometimes legislation can have a performative function and that seems to be at least part of what is happening with this bill. “The bill is conceived more as a campaign aid than a workable policy measure,” Rafael Behr writes in his Guardian column today. And that may explain why yesterday Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, floated a new argument to defend the government’s anti small boats crusade. The people arriving weren’t just imposing an economic cost on the country, he argued; they were imposing a social cost. He told the Policy Exchange thinktank:
Those crossing tend to have completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK and tend to settle in already hyper-diverse areas, undermining the cultural cohesiveness that binds diverse groups together and makes our proud multi-ethnic democracy so successful.
Braverman has been giving interviews this morning and she told LBC she agreed with Jenrick. She said:
I think that uncontrolled and unprecedented levels of illegal migration are totally unacceptable to our country and to our values.
Asked whether she agreed with Jenrick’s view that uncontrolled migration “threatens to cannibalise the compassion of the British public”, Braverman replied:
I think that the people coming here illegally do possess values which are at odds with our country.
We are seeing heightened levels of criminality when related to the people who’ve come on boats related to drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution.
There are real challenges which go beyond the migration issue of people coming here illegally. We need to ensure that we bring an end to the boat crossings.
I will post more from her interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The Home Office is expected to release figures showing the government has met its manifesto target of increasing police numbers by 20,000. (Labour says this will only repair the damage done by Tory cuts before 2019.)
9.30am: Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee on policing.
10am: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, gives a speech at the launch of the Public Safety Foundation.
10.15am: Lord Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, and Lord Macpherson, the former Treasury permanent secretary, give evidence to the Lords constitution committee on the appointment and dismissal of senior civil servants.
Noon: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.
After 12.45pm: MPs begin the final day of Commons debate on the illegal migration bill. Votes on amendments will take place at 6pm.
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