'It will enable more slave drivers to operate and make money out of human misery, it will consign more people to slavery.'
Former Prime Minister Theresa May has slammed the government’s migration policies, warning that they will ‘consign more people to slavery’.
Her comments came as MPs debated the government’s Illegal Migration Bill for three and a half hours in the Commons yesterday, after several amendments by the House of Lords were overturned, including a Lords amendment which required the Illegal Migration Bill to follow international conventions.
It comes after the government suffered a record 20 defeats in the House of Lords over its controversial bill, which human rights groups have already condemned for breaking international law.
The bill is designed to stop ‘small boats’ crossing the English Channel and places a duty on the Home Secretary to remove those entering the UK by irregular means.
Speaking in the Commons, May said: “We all want to stop the boats … but this bill is not just written to stop the boats, it covers all illegal migration and its unwritten subtext is the stop-certain-victims’-claims-of-slavery bill.”
May pointed to amendment 56 from the Lords, which sought to ensure victims would not be detained and removed from the UK if they had been modern slaves, and urged the government to support it.
She said: “I know that ministers have said this bill will enable more perpetrators to be stopped, but on modern slavery I genuinely believe it will do the opposite.
“It will enable more slave drivers to operate and make money out of human misery, it will consign more people to slavery. No doubt about it, I think if Lords Amendment 56 is overthrown that will be the impact.”
May used the example of a young woman trapped in slavery and said that the bill would offer her no support. She said: “The government’s response would be ‘We don’t care that you’ve been in slavery in the UK, we don’t care that you’ve been in a living hell, we don’t care that you have been the victim of crime. We do care that you came here illegally even though you probably didn’t know it, so we’re going to detain you and send you home even if it’s into the arms of the very people who trafficked you here in the first place or we want to send you to Rwanda.”
The former Prime Minister said that she would “persist in disagreeing with the government” unless it exempts people trafficked into the UK from new measures to detain and rapidly deport migrants.
MP’s later voted to reject amendment 56 to the illegal migration bill.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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