Labour peer Alf Dubs says the government’s policies on immigration are fuelling human trafficking
The government’s “Illegal Migration” Bill Parliament, contravenes the UK’s international obligations, is unworkable and expensive, and will fuel the trade in human trafficking.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has made it clear that proposals to detain all who arrive on our shores would breach the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Rights of Refugees. Children, pregnant women and survivors of slavery and torture could be detained for 28 days including in unfit, disused army barracks and so-called “prison ships”. Asylum seekers could be “returned” or sent to Rwanda, no matter how good their case.
This Bill fuels people trafficking by failing to provide legal routes for asylum seekers. We must expand safe routes, particularly for children and those seeking family reunion, explore a visa scheme which would allow people to apply for asylum in the UK from close to the country they have fled, and commit to proper cooperation with France and our EU partners, most of whom take significantly more refugees than we do.
The Home Office must also tackle the backlog of asylum applications, which last year stood at 160,000. This prevents asylum seekers from getting on with their lives and contributing to the economy and represents an incentive to the people traffickers to continue their trade.
Alf Dubs, MP for Battersea from 1979 to 1987, was a child refugee himself, escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport in 1939.
