‘Seeking safety by any means they can’: the unimaginable horrors that drive refugees to the sea

This week we have once again been confronted by the appalling news of people losing their lives at sea as they desperately seek sanctuary. The number of lives confirmed as lost off the coast of Greece is particularly devastating and seems certain to grow.

Most of us want to see humane solutions to ensure that desperate people do not need to take such perilous journeys to find protection. But this tragedy has happened just as the Illegal Migration Bill is being debated in the House of Lords – a bill that will be ineffective in addressing the tragic loss of life we’ve seen so often in the English Channel.

Instead, as I and many others from all sides of the House of Lords have been arguing, the bill would close the door on anyone seeking asylum in the UK unless they arrived by a so-called legal route. This would mean children from Sudan, people who worked alongside British personnel in Afghanistan and those devastated by war in Syria would be denied sanctuary. This is because there are very few safe ways for people from these countries and others to reach our shores. With the exception of refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong, what routes there were have been all but closed – and the bill sets out no steps to address this.

Instead, we see measures that target rather than help victims, driven by the idea that adopting an ever-more hostile and cruel stance towards those fleeing war and persecution will deter them from seeking sanctuary in Britain. In a long list of bad refugee policies, the Illegal Migration Bill is a new low which “would amount to an asylum ban”, in the words of the UN’s refugee agency.

My own family sought refuge in the UK after the revolution in Iran left the small Anglican community there under attack. My father, a bishop in Iran, survived an attack on his life. My 24-year-old brother was assassinated. The truth is that those fleeing war, famine and persecution simply have to find safety by any means they can. 43 years on I have to wonder whether we would have now found that safety and the welcome we received which allowed us to rebuild our lives.

If the Illegal Migration Bill becomes law, asylum seekers – who are fleeing unimaginable horrors and currently have no choice but to arrive by means such as a small boat – will face being locked behind bars while the government seeks to remove them without even hearing their asylum case.

What’s more, it would mean our country could lock up an estimated 45,000 children in the first three years after the bill is passed. Such mass detention of children would apply regardless of whether they were with their families or unaccompanied, without any time limit, and in any facility across the country the home secretary deemed necessary. We know from our past experience of child detention in Britain – as well as past practice in countries like Australia and Greece – the profound physical and mental harm it causes to children, often scarring them for life.

The Illegal Migration Bill is provoking strong opposition from all sides of the political spectrum as well as medical bodies, faith groups, children’s charities and the more than 500 national and local groups of all kinds united in the Together With Refugees coalition – there is increasing public horror. As we mourn the tragic loss of human life on the other side of Europe, let us channel that human compassion and solidarity into finding a new and better way here in the UK. I hope ministers will reflect and think again about the bill as a whole, and revise this measure of extreme cruelty.