The Illegal Migration Bill is having a distorting effect on the Tory party. It has put Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith together on the side of liberal opinion – and Ken Clarke on the side of the Prime Minister.
This week, May and Duncan Smith sought to stop the government from overturning a Lords amendment which would prevent the deportation of those claiming to be victims of people-trafficking.
Rishi Sunak thinks that loopholes in the law have been exploited by people-traffickers. May and Duncan Smith disagree. It fell to Clarke, a fierce critic of the government since Brexit, to challenge the plan’s opponents to come up with a better way of addressing the illegal migration problem.
The traffickers’ business model is based on the assumption that there is little realistic prospect of deportation
Clarke has a good point. Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ is based on reasonable logic. The human trafficking industry charges between £2,000 and £15,000 for passage to Britain.
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