The Illegal Migration Bill is making its final crossing today to become an Act, after peers and MPs voted into the small hours on the final changes to the legislation. The House of Lords eventually dropped the amendments that they’d been holding out on, including the plan by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, for the government to draw up a proper international strategy for refugees and an amendment from Lord Randall of Uxbridge on victims of modern slavery.
It became clear that these peers were not going to have any luck when Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick opened the ‘ping-pong’ debate in the Commons by telling MPs there would be no more compromises from the government. This was then followed by his Lords colleague Lord Murray calling on peers to ‘respect the will of the elected House and the British people by passing this bill’.
It hasn’t been an easy passage for this Bill, but it could have been much more difficult
There were, though, still Conservative rebellions in the Commons on a number of amendments that the government was throwing out.
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