Braverman’s attitude to refugees isn’t just unreasonable – it’s ineffective

Home secretary Suella Braverman’s claim that refugees crossing the English Channel are “criminals” goes against the British sense of what is fair and honourable.

While the Conservative Party is undoubtedly trying to stop the continued trade in human misery, adopting a blanket response does not work. Saying that migrants who make dangerous crossings in small boats possess “values which are at odds with our country” and display “heightened levels of criminality”, as Ms Braverman has done, feels inflammatory and unjust. One label does not fit all.

The Independent has been highlighting the case of the Afghan war hero and pilot who himself arrived in the UK on a small boat and is currently facing deportation. The Iraq war veteran Colonel Tim Collins has now backed our campaign to give him asylum.

Ms Braverman is preparing to break international law, and to ignore both the Human Rights Act and certain rulings made by the European Court of Human Rights, to which the UK is bound by international treaty.

However, that is not much of a deterrent to the home secretary, and she appears to be becoming increasingly strident in her dehumanisation of refugees. Of course there are people who abuse the asylum system, and criminal gangs are obviously involved in a vile trade, but Ms Braverman must be careful not to assume that, among those making the hazardous crossing in small boats, there are no genuine cases of people fleeing war, persecution, torture and hunger.

She rarely uses the term “refugee”, and appears to be inherently suspicious of those who seek only safety. Listening to Ms Braverman speak, nobody would conclude that 71 per cent of asylum claims are successful – and that, of those that are initially unsuccessful, some 47 per cent are allowed on appeal.

The home secretary dismisses the contributions to society that generations of migrants of all kinds have made, and instead insists: “We are seeing heightened levels of criminality when related to the people who’ve come on boats, related to drug dealing, exploitation, prostitution.”

This “othering” by Ms Braverman of desperate human beings is, sadly, becoming a bit of a theme. At the last Conservative conference, she declared that her “dream” was to see a photograph on the front of The Daily Telegraph of a planeload of deported refugees taking off en route to Kigali.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that she is looking towards the next contest for the leadership of her party, and that she knows exactly what to say and do to win it.

Her problem is that, although she and Rishi Sunak have been trying to appease the so-called “common sense” group of Conservatives, there are others in their party who are still prepared to work to prevent the most offensive and inhumane aspects of the Illegal Migration Bill.

In an unusual but heartening alliance, Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith are trying to maintain the protections afforded to those being trafficked into modern slavery. The House of Lords will also attempt to inject some humanity into Ms Braverman’s obscene legislation, in particular on the treatment of child refugees.

Even if the bill does become law, there is no sense that it will actually succeed in its purpose. The Rwanda scheme is nowhere near large enough to cope with the tens of thousands of migrants currently accommodated here, and does nothing to speed up the processing of applications.

Nor is the scheme proving to be as much of a deterrent as it is claimed to be; if you are willing to risk drowning or dying from hypothermia in the English Channel, there is no additional deterrent that could possibly work.

Instead, people arriving by irregular means will only be deterred from presenting themselves to Border Force officials, and will instead focus on achieving a clandestine landing in the UK and then melting into the informal economy. Rather than exerting more control, the Braverman bill will mean that the authorities will have even less of an idea of who is entering the UK and why they wish to do so.

Ms Braverman argues: “There is no good reason for anybody to get into a small boat and cross the Channel in search of a life in the UK.” Yet that is plainly wrong. The present Sudan crisis reminds us that the UK has no general safe and secure route by which people in war zones, such as Sudan, can apply for asylum.

The Independent has highlighted the plight of the Afghan pilot and the problems in the way the Afghanistan schemes work. The only other schemes the UK operates are for people arriving from Ukraine and Hong Kong. The rest of the world is deemed safe.

The government says it will arrange, in concert with the UN High Commission for Refugees, some other capped and bespoke schemes but these will necessarily be limited and may be slow to set up. Right now, a child facing death in Sudan is completely unable to join the transports taking British citizens out of the country. Unsurprisingly, Ms Braverman has nothing to say about that.