Now that Gary Lineker has your attention, let’s talk about the stop the boats policy.

Gary Lineker has been in the news a lot this week for a tweet he posted on March 7th in relation to a new policy the Conservative party are attempting to pass. And whilst almost everyone in the country can probably tell you about the tweet, I don’t know how many can talk much about the actual policy that started all this. So, let’s get into it shall we?

The policy, a summary.
The policy that is colloquially being referred to as the “Stop the Boats” bill, is actually the Illegal Immigration Bill 2023. In short, if this bill passes and you arrived to the UK to claim asylum from Tuesday March 7th 2023 onwards, your claim to asylum would be ruled inadmissable if you came by boat or in a truck, and you would be detained within the first 28 days of arrival, and detention powers will be extended. This would allow the UK to keep people locked up for as long as there is a “reasonable” prospect of removal. After this point, you would be deported. This would mean being removed either back to your home country, or to a “safe third country” such as Rwanda. Only those under 18, medically unfit to fly, or at real risk of serious and irreversible harm in the country we are removing them to, will be able to delay their removal. Another crucial part of this bill, is that if you arrived by boat or truck, not only would your asylum claim be inadmissable, but you wouldn’t be able to benefit from modern slavery protections in the UK.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, wrote an open letter to MPs and peers in which she claimed “This will break the business model of people smuggling networks, and ultimately save lives. In return, it will free up capacity so that we can better support those in genuine need of protection through safe and legal routes.” She has also spoken about how asylum seekers should stop in the first safe country they get to, and repeatedly referred to migrants who arrive by boat as an “invasion".

She also went on to say that “other human rights claims, including the right to private or family life, or other forms of judicial review cannot suspend your removal. They will be heard remotely, after removal. You will face a permanent bar on lawful re-entry to the UK and a permanent bar from securing settlement in the UK or from securing British citizenship through naturalisation or registration, subject only to very narrow exceptions.”

International Human Rights Law
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has openly acknowledged that this Bill is likely going to breach international human rights law, but says he is ready for the fight. So how exactly does it breach human rights laws?

First, The Bill proposes not applying section three of the Human Rights Act which in short means migrants are effectively barred from using the legislation to block their removal from the UK. Section 3 requires anyone interpreting our laws to do so in a way that is compatible with human rights – and that’s the same requirement for courts, tribunals and public authority, including MPs. Disapplying it means they are not legally bound to apply human rights to the enactment of this law. Asylum seekers, some of the most vulnerable people on the planet, would not have the protection of the Human Rights Act. The Home Secretary’s right to remove will take precedence in law over migrants' asylum, human rights and modern slavery claims.

The Bill would also give the UK the power to overrule/counter European Court of Human Rights injunctions like the one which blocked the first flight attempting to deport migrants to Rwanda. Rule 39 will allow the Government to ignore injunctions if negotiations with the ECHR fail to resolve Britain’s concerns about the migrants. Effectively, removing Section 3 and implementing rule 39 removes the legal responsibility for the UK Government to treat human beings with human rights, and removes significant checks and balances.

Safe and Legal routes
Suella Braverman says that if asylum seekers do not want to be treated this way, they should make their way to the UK legally. When pressed on the safe and legal options for asylum seekers from places like Syria and Iraq, she could not answer.

Here are some key points.
1. To claim asylum in the UK, you have to physically be here. Not at an embassy, but physically here on our island.
2. To be eligible for asylum you must have left your country and be unable to go back because you fear persecution.
3. The refugee council found that 91% of people came from just ten countries where human rights abuses and persecution are common, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Eritrea. Those countries do not allow visa free travel to the UK.
4. To get a visa to enter the UK, you have to prove you have access to sufficient funds in order to support and house yourself and any dependents throughout your stay without accessing public funds.
5. You also have to prove you are fully intending to leave the UK at the end of your visit and do not plan to stay for longer than six months.
6. There is no asylum visa, to get here legally you need either a short/long term visa, a work visa, or a student visa. The minimum cost is £100.

Tell me. How is someone fleeing their home because it has been torn apart by war, or famine, or government corruption, supposed to prove they have enough money to house themselves in the UK? Nevermind the economics of conversion rate for whatever money they do have - if they have fled with next to nothing, are they realistically going to have the funds available to prove that? To get on a plane, let alone get the Visa, you need to provide a passport. How is someone at severe risk of government persecution supposed to apply for a passport to leave their country without alerting the government to exactly where they are and exactly where they are going? How are they going to prove that they plan to leave, when their plan is actually to claim asylum? Both of these immediately make it close to impossible for those fleeing for their lives to access a “safe and legal” route into the UK. If it is also illegal for them to access the UK by boat, how are they supposed to get here to claim asylum? Remember, they have to physically be on the island to make the claim - how do they get here?

First Safe Country
This is something we hear a lot. That asylum seekers should simply stop at the first safe country. There’s such a lack of critical thought in that statement, and it is often stated as fact, when it couldn’t be more fiction. First of all, there’s the simple truth that the Refugee Convention gives us all the right to seek asylum wherever we feel safe and able to rebuild our lives. Second of all, logistically, make that make sense. Take Syria alone, they had over 13million people displaced and 6.7million people forced to flee as refugees. The argument that is consistently made about channel crossings is that the UK cannot possibly play host to any more refugees. As of November 2022 there were 231,597 refugees, 127,421 pending asylum cases and 5,483  stateless persons  in the UK including recent Ukrainians refugees. That is equal to 0.54% of the entire UK population. If a total of 364,501 people is “too much” for the UK to take on, how can we possibly suggest that the first safe country - in the case of Syria, Turkiye, - should facilitate 6.7 million refugees? No country is equipped to sustain that amount of people, and that is the entire purpose of the Refugee Convention. “First safe country” if enacted would essentially put huge pressure on neighbouring countries in politically unstable regions, whilst absolving the wealthier countries further afield of any responsibility, thus furthering the global wealth divide. It is neither true, nor feasible.

Invasion
There is something about the UK of all countries complaining about their country being invaded by people arriving by boat. But aside from the historical absurdity, it’s also just factually incorrect. The United Kingdom takes in far fewer asylum seekers than other European countries. According to figures from the Home Office there were 74,751 asylum applications in made in the UK in 2022. When you look at this in comparison to the other members of the so called “Big 5”, the UK had the least claims. There were 296,555 asylum applications made in Germany, 179,705 applications made in France, 128,015 made in Spain, and 77,000 made in Italy during the same period.

And yes, the UK did see an increase in the number of people crossing the channel to seek asylum, but the UK also reduced the number of safe and “legal” ways to enter the country. In fact, Amnesty International go so far as to say there are no safe and legal routes into the UK to claim asylum since the UK withdrew from the EU and therefore also the Dublin Regulations. Of course it’s going to feel, or appear, like the problem is getting worse when you create an environment that forces people into the boats if they’re ever going to make it to the UK. It is not an invasion, it is not an influx, it is a UK government who have manufactured a very specific set of circumstances to make life as hard as possible for the world’s most vulnerable.

So, there you have it, that’s the run down on the Bill. And I know my audience, so whilst many people reading this will have already been opposed to the bill, I finish with some food for thought for the people out there who think asylum seekers are the root cause of their problems. In 2021 in the UK there were 667,479 deaths and 694,685 births. That’s a population increase of 27,206. There were 48,540 applications for asylum that same year. Do you really think the asylum seekers making a population increase - without taking into account immigration and emigration - of 75,746 people is the reason people born in the UK are struggling? Do you really think if they hadn’t come in 2021, UK citizens wouldn’t have struggled? Or could it perhaps be that the people who have:
- made £37 billion worth of cuts to healthcare and education in the last decade,
- have cut the same amount in social welfare,
- have cost the economy an estimated £540 billion in the same time frame,
- made so many benefit cuts it drove child poverty up before the pandemic even hit,
- implemented austerity policies that have seen the number of food parcels distributed by food banks in the UK rise from 60,000 in 2010, to 2.5 million in 2021,
- have overseen the widening of the wealth gap in the UK to the point where the top 1% of households in the UK have 230x more wealth than the lowest 10%,
may possibly have a little bit more to do with it than vulnerable people looking for a safe and peaceful life? And could it be, that it benefits them if you don’t hold them accountable for it, and instead focus all that anger and frustration on targetting a group that have nothing to do with it?