Date: 2023-04-26
Olivia Blake: Before I begin, I direct the House to my entry in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, which outlines the support I received from the RAMP project. I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). These amendments attempt to mitigate the damage the Bill will do to some of the most vulnerable people, by requiring reports on how it will affect the pregnant, victims of modern slavery and the health and human rights of refugees. New clauses 2 and 3 would safeguard pregnant women and girls from removal. I have spoken to people working on the frontline in detention centres who feel deeply uncomfortable and ill-equipped to deal with pregnant women in such settings, so these amendments are vital. In fact, every woman who arrives in a detention centre is given a pregnancy test because staff recognise that where they work is not appropriate for pregnant women. New clause 4 would support young people under the age of 18 in their interaction with the asylum system. This stands in stark contrast to the Government's obsession with trying to discredit and dehumanise children, either by proposing bogus scientific assessments to determine their age--I say that as a biomedical scientist--or by bizarrely claiming that granting safety to children is some sort of pull factor. Lobotomies were once widespread across the globe too, but that does not mean they were scientifically valid, accurate or moral. Just because someone else is doing it does not mean we have to do it here, especially when the evidence for the accuracy of these tests is so poor. It is a damning indictment of this Bill that my hon. and right hon. Friends have needed to table this extensive list of new clauses. The protections they are attempting to introduce are outstripped only by the litany of rights that this Government are attempting to remove from some of the world's most vulnerable people. The Government's contemptible proposals have been tabled for entirely cynical reasons. We all want to stop the boats. But when the Government say, "Stop the boats", it is not because they want to end the crisis in the channel, because they want to have safe borders where people do not die on them or because they want to end the suffering of people who are trying to come here to claim asylum. It is not even because they want to end the horror of people drowning as they attempt to reach refuge in the UK. It is because they are intent on vilifying people who have survived some of the most harrowing and worst things human beings can go through. I know that because I have spoken to many, many refugees and asylum seekers who have come here on boats. The Government are taking this approach because on these big issues they have no answers, so they are resorting to scapegoats. It is clear that that has been an agenda long before this Bill was presented and that the Government are being pushed around by a very small and extreme group within the Conservative party, as we see when we look at Government new clause 22. It shamefully bars UK courts from interim measures to stop someone from being deported if they bring a legal challenge. The Government claim that they are considering fairness and the rule of law, and that that is a key British principle and value, but this measure sheds that. The Government are only too keen to undermine these principles if it helps them in the scapegoating of the most vulnerable. They want to bypass the European Court of Human Rights and harm Britain's standing in the world, eroding the foundations of the international refugee systems and the refugee convention, all to appease their Back Benchers and throw red meat to a small portion of their base.