Welby leads the Lords against Braverman’s boats bill

Today in parliament has been dominated by the Upper House, where peers are scrutinising the Illegal Migration Bill at its second reading. The debate is only halfway through but the legislation has been subject to something resembling a turkey shoot as noble lord after noble lord has queued up to attack the government’s proposals. The Archbishop of Canterbury made perhaps the day’s most memorable speech when he told his fellow peers that it was:

Morally unacceptable and politically impractical to let the poorest countries deal with it alone and cut our international aid. This is an attempt at a short-term fix. It risks great damage to the UK’s interests and reputation at home and abroad, let alone the interests of those in need of protection or the nations who together face this challenge.

Welby said the bill would not address climate change or international conflict at the base of migration. He also reminded the Lords of the warning by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee that, if passed without amendment, the new law could lead to the collapse of the international system for protecting refugees. Welby was joined in his condemnation by a host of Liberal Democrat and Labour peers, with the day’s order paper an early indicator that it would be a debate dominated by the government’s critics.

Yet it wasn’t just Welby’s vehemence that distinguished his speech. The Archbishop told the House that, despite his concerns, he would not be supporting an amendment by the Lib Dem peer Lord Paddick that would block the legislation as a whole. Welby felt that ‘it is not our duty to throw out this bill’, given its passage through the Commons. Lord Forysth – one of a handful of Tory peers present – went further and labelled the Paddick amendment ‘an abuse’ of parliamentary norms, given that the Illegal Migration Bill had passed with a majority of 60.

That argument about the democratic deficit formed the main thrust of the Bill’s supporters in the Upper House, rather than a focus on its merits in ‘stopping the boats.’ Indeed Lord Dobbs, who supported the government’s plans, conceded that they were ‘distasteful’ but that they were battling a ‘distasteful’ system and the alternatives would be worse. He therefore urged peers to abandon the ‘quixotic and deeply unconstitutional’ Paddick amendment.

The House will likely do so tonight, largely because Labour will not be supporting it on the grounds that the government would otherwise pass it via the Parliament Act. Welby instead plans to table amendments to the bill at committee stage, which would include plans that he said were missing in the current bill to combat people traffickers and to update the 1951 UN refugee convention. Others peers will likely do the same.

This represents the real challenge to the Illegal Migration Bill, which only passed the Commons after various Tory factions were carefully appeased. It won’t be blocked by the House of Lords but could suffer death by a thousand cuts when it comes to committee stage instead.