Amnesty UK briefing on Part 2 (Asylum and Immigration) of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Part 2 of the bill includes various provisions on asylum and immigration. This briefing sets out concerns on several key provisions and matters related to them including:

1. The failure to repeal significant parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. This emphasises the Government's underlying commitment to the same policy and strategy pursued by its predecessor, albeit with some rejection or abandonment of particular means by which that was pursued where ministers have decided these were unworkable or too costly.

2. The absence of any safe routes for people to seek asylum in the UK. This confirms the emphasis of Part 1 on obstructing and penalising people seeking asylum and victims of human trafficking while providing neither alternative to them nor mitigation of their plight.

3. Clause 43 (Conditions on leave to enter or remain). This is an especially stark example of the desire for power at the Home Office without care to constrain its exercise of power or to distinguish between its proper role and purpose and the distinct role, purpose and functions of other authorities concerned with other policy aims.

4. Respect for the Refugee Convention. The Convention is, in practice, widely under threat with all the risk that more people are compelled to make more dangerous journeys, including to the UK. However, Government policy remains to further weaken the Convention doing serious harm in the UK and, by impact of its example, elsewhere to nobody's gain save for those exploiting refugees and other especially vulnerable people.