Illegal Migration Bill would bring a ban on seeking asylum, protesters argue

Around 50 people, including poet and author Michael Rosen, trade unionists and refugee campaigners, took part in the demonstration in Parliament Square on Monday evening.

Rosen told demonstrators: “This is not the Illegal Immigration Bill. It’s the scapegoating bill.

“A Government in trouble is trying the old trick of hoping to shore up support by blaming migrants for its own shortcomings.

“This is playing with fire: encouraging hostility towards desperate people.

“We’ve had a glimpse of what a decent approach to migrants looks like with how Ukrainians have been welcomed. Why the difference?”

He also criticised immigration minister Robert Jenrick for claiming ‘cowboy builders’ painted a Micky Mouse mural at an asylum centre for unaccompanied children in Kent.

Rosen said: “It tells you the cowboy builders – if that’s what they were – have got more heart than Robert Jenrick.”

He added that opening safe and legal routes for migrants is the only way to stop small boat arrivals “and if you doubt it ask yourself why there are no Ukrainians or people from Hong Kong crossing the Channel in cramped and unsafe dinghies.”

Representatives of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents civil servants including at the Home Office, joined the protest.

Paul O’Connor, head of bargaining at the PCS, told PA news agency Home Office civil servants had approached the union with concerns about Government immigration policy.

The union joined asylum seekers and charities earlier this year to bring High Court action over the Government plans to deport migrants to Rwanda.

He added: “We have massive support amongst the membership, particularly in the Home Office itself.

“It is important for people to understand that the Civil Service is not there to blindly carry out instructions given by ministers.

“Part of their job is to speak truth to power. They have been giving advice repeatedly to the Government that the policy they are embarking on is illegal.”

During the protest, Charlotte Khan, of the Care4Calais charity said “this Bill is an asylum ban” and “isn’t representative of who we are as a people, as a compassionate society.”

She added: “If there is anything criminal here it is the Bill itself. It is not illegal to seek asylum.”

British Medical Association branch officer Kambiz Boomla said the NHS would have “fallen apart” repeatedly without migrant doctors and nurses.

He said he was proud his union had criticised the Government decision to partly fund pay rises for junior doctors by increasing the surcharges migrants pay to use the NHS.

Liz Wheatley, an activist at trade union Unison, told the protesters: “We want the borders open and we want to welcome all refugees, and we want the rich to pay for it.”

Protester Morag Gillie, 67, of Islington, north London, told PA: “I just feel really angry that people are fleeing war, persecution or just trying to look for a better life, and the Tories are diverting people’s attention away from the real problems in this country.”

Khalid Malik, 24, from Forest Gate, east London, said: “I think this protest will let the Government and the Labour leadership know that people do care and we oppose it.”

On Monday night the Commons voted down amendments the House of Lords had made to the Bill.

The legislation now returns to the upper chamber where further amendments are expected to be made late on Monday night, in what is known as ping-pong, in which both Houses make changes until they can agree on the final wording.

Mr Jenrick told MPs earlier that many of the changes supported by peers would drive a “coach and horses through the fabric of the legislation”.

The Bill seeks to detain and remove from the UK deemed to have arrived in the UK illegally.

Labour MPs Diane Abbott and John McDonnell had been expected to attend the protest but were not able to due to parliamentary commitments.