Peers defeat government’s immigration bill and clause criminalising irregular routes

A controversial immigration bill has been defeated four times in the House of Lords – including a clause that would have criminalised refugees who arrive in the UK through an irregular route.

Forty-nine rabbis joined over  1000 faith leaders in calling for Boris Johnson to agree to last ditch changes to the Nationality and Borders Bill ahead of Monday’s Lords vote.

Speaking against Clause  11, the refugee campaigner and Labour peer Lord Dubs, who came to the UK on the kindertransport in 1938, said people fleeing Afghanistan and Ukraine “give lie to the idea that somehow you can get here by the sort of route that the Home Office approves of”.

The clause divided refugees into two classes based on how they arrived in the UK.

Peers voted by 204 to 126, against the move.

Rabbis from all denominations had argued that if the clause had remained, people who made their own way to the UK would be given an inferior form of protection and limited rights when compared with those who arrived through government-sanctioned routes.

All four defeats came at the report stage of the Bill.

Peers also amended the Bill to scrap a controversial measure that would allow people to be stripped of their British citizenship without warning.

This was supported by 209 votes to 173.