Theresa May slams Illegal Migration Bill for allowing ‘more slave drivers to make money out of human misery’

Published

2 years ago

July 12, 2023

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Theresa May has attacked the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, saying it would “enable more slave drivers to… make money out of human misery” and “consign more people to slavery”.

The former prime minister, who has long campaigned on tackling modern slavery in the UK, said ministers wanted to use the new legislation to “stop the boats” crossing the English Channel.

But in a passionate speech in the Commons, she warned the bill needed to change or would lead to victims getting no support – and perpetrators getting away with their crimes.

Politics live: Minister questions impact of safe and legal routes

MPs debated proposed amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill made by peers throughout Tuesday afternoon after 20 defeats were inflicted on the legislation in the House of Lords.

The bill itself aims for the “swift detention and removal” of people arriving in the UK illegally, sending them back to their country of origin or a third country – like Rwanda.

But peers had a number of issues with the legislation – especially around the treatment of women, children, people from the LGBT+ community, and victims of modern slavery – and sent back a number of changes for the Commons to look at.

The government announced its own fresh amendments on Monday in an attempt to stop MPs supporting the Lords, including a promise that new rules on removing people would not be applied retrospectively – only after the bill becomes law.

They also reduced the time children could be detained for – eight days instead of the proposed 28 – and pledged to keep the current rule on detaining pregnant women for a maximum of 72 hours.

But the concessions had not gone far enough for some, leading to terse exchanges in the Commons from the government’s own benches.

A number of high profile Tory backbenchers rebelled against the government over their support for some of the amendments, including Mrs May, former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, ex-minister Sir Robert Buckland and health select committee chair Steve Brine.

But despite their efforts – and after almost four hours of voting in the Commons – none of the peers’ amendments gained the backing of a majority in the House, and the legislation will now return to the Lords for further scrutiny.

Speaking in the debate earlier on Tuesday, Mrs May welcomed some of the changes brought forward by the Home Office, “whatever the motivation”, but added: “I want support to continue for the victims of modern slavery in the UK after commencement of the bill.”

She pointed to amendment 56 from the Lords, which sought to ensure victims would not be detained and removed from the UK if they had been modern slaves, and urged the government to support it.

“This bill has been marketed as a ‘stop the boats’ bill,” she said. “We all want to stop the boats, nobody wants to see people risking their lives in small boats across the Channel.

“But this bill is not just written to stop the boats. It covers all illegal migration. And its unwritten subtext is the ‘stop certain victims’ claims of modern slavery’ bill, not stop false claims of modern slavery, but stop all claims full stop, and that is where I depart from the government.”

The former PM gave the hypothetical situation of a woman “persuaded” by a man to come to the country “for a great job and wonderful life together”, ending up trafficked into prostitution and not even knowing the papers he used to get her in were illegal.

“Under this bill, she would get no support,” said Mrs May. “The government’s response would be, ‘we don’t care that you’ve been in slavery in the UK, we don’t care that you have been in a living hell, we don’t care that you have been the victim of crime.

“‘We do care that you came here illegally, even though you probably didn’t know it, so we are going to detain you and send you home, even if it is into the arms of the very people who trafficked you here in the first place, or we want to send you to Rwanda’.”

Mrs May also warned the bill “ties the hands of the police and it undoes the good work of the Modern Slavery Act”, as it would stop victims providing evidence to catch the perpetrators.

“It will enable more slave drivers to operate and make money out of human misery,” said the influential MP. “It will consign more people to slavery. No doubt about it, I think if [the Lord’s amendment] is overthrown, that will be the impact.”

But the amendment was rejected by MPs by 285 votes to 243.

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Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda sign US-brokered peace deal – but doubts over success linger

Published

2 hours ago

June 28, 2025

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Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda sign US-brokered peace deal - but doubts over success linger

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have signed a peace deal which Donald Trump said he brokered – resulting in the US getting “a lot” of mineral rights in the process.

The deal has been touted as an important step towards ending the decades-long conflict in eastern DRC which has caused the deaths of six million people.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio called it “an important moment after 30 years of war”.

The Congo-Rwanda conflict explained

Earlier on Friday, President Trump said he was able to broker a deal for “one of the worst wars anyone’s ever seen”.

“I was able to get them together and sell it,” Mr Trump said. “And not only that, we’re getting for the United States a lot of the mineral rights from Congo.”

‘Great deal of uncertainty’

The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, the most prominent armed group in the conflict, has suggested that the agreement won’t be binding for them.

It hasn’t been directly involved in the planned peace deal.

DRC foreign minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner invoked the millions of victims of the conflict in signing the agreement with Rwandan foreign minister Olivier Nduhungirehe.

The agreement, signed by the foreign ministers during a ceremony with Mr Rubio in Washington, pledges to implement a 2024 deal that would see Rwandan troops withdraw from eastern DRC within 90 days, according to a copy seen by Reuters.

“Some wounds will heal, but they will never fully disappear,” Ms Wagner said. “Those who have suffered the most are watching. They are expecting this agreement to be respected, and we cannot fail them.”

Mr Nduhungirehe noted the “great deal of uncertainty” because previous agreements were not put in place.

“There is no doubt that the road ahead will not be easy,” he said. “But with the continued support of the United States and other partners, we believe that a turning point has been reached.”

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UN data on Gaza deaths ‘disinformation’, claims head of controversial aid group

Published

1 day ago

June 27, 2025

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UN data on Gaza deaths 'disinformation', claims head of controversial aid group

The chief of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has called figures by the United Nations on people killed at aid hubs “disinformation”.

The UN said at least 410 Palestinians have been killed seeking food since Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade on 19 May, while the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said at least 549 people have been killed.

Johnnie Moore, executive director of GHF, told Sky News that there is a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip, fuelled by “some figures” coming out every day.

Mr Moore, an evangelical preacher who served as a White House adviser in the first Trump administration, said his aid group has delivered more than 44 million meals to Gazans since it began operations in May.

The controversial group, backed by Israel and the United States, has been rejected by the UN and other aid groups, which have refused to cooperate with the GHF.

The aid agencies claim Israel is weaponising food, and the new distribution system using the GHF will be ineffective and lead to further displacement of Palestinians.

They also argue the GHF will fail to meet local needs and violate humanitarian principles that prohibit a warring party from controlling humanitarian assistance.

The GHF is distributing food packages, which they say can feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days, in four locations, with the majority in the far south of Gaza.

GHF chief was ‘really political, really punchy’ in Sky News interview

Tom Cheshire

Data and forensics correspondent

@chesh

It was really political, really punchy, and I think the heart of the matter here is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is too political.

The principle of aid, when applied traditionally, is that it has to be applied neutrally and that is what used to happen.

Trucks would go into Gaza, and the UN would distribute that food. Israel, for a long time, said that’s not working and they blame Hamas for that.

At a briefing by the Israeli prime minister’s office yesterday, they were saying that Hamas was still looting those aid vehicles, and it was coming out with a plan to stop that. It didn’t provide evidence for that.

When we asked for evidence, they said we shouldn’t swallow Hamas disinformation. That’s a word that’s been used. That’s very, very political.

This is a different model of doing things. And that is the concern: that rather than just handing it over to a neutral body, this is too close to Israel, it’s too close to the US, and is backed financially by the US.

What does that actually imply? Well, if you’re choosing where those sites are, it means people are going to move down there if you’re not putting them in certain places.

The number of distribution sites has dwindled. It’s attenuated. And so, actually, if there are only a few and if there are any in the south of Gaza, that encourages people to move there, that might fit a political goal as well as a humanitarian one.

Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the aid hubs and have to move through Israeli military zones, where witnesses say the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.

Both figures from the UN and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry say hundreds of people have been killed or wounded.

In response to Mr Moore’s comments, Rachael Cummings, Save the Children’s team leader in Gaza, told Sky News that people in Gaza “are being forced into the decision to go to retrieve food from the American- and Israeli-backed, militarised, food distribution point”.

“We’re not contesting at all that there have been casualties in the Gaza Strip. I mean, there’s no ceasefire. This is an active conflict,” Mr Moore said.

“I think people may not understand as clearly what it means to operate a humanitarian operation on this scale, in an environment this complex, in a piece of land as small as the Gaza Strip, and may not appreciate that almost anything that happens in the Gaza Strip is going to take place in proximity to something.”

Mr Moore said that the GHF was not denying that there had been “those incidents”, but said the GHF was able to talk to the IDF, which would conduct an investigation, while Hamas was “intentionally harming people for he purpose of defaming what we’re doing”.

He said the GHF, “an independent organisation operating with the blessing of the US government”, was “achieving its aims” by feeding Gazans.

It comes after the US State Department announced on Thursday that it had approved $30m in funding for the GHF as it called on other countries to also support the controversial group delivering aid in Gaza.

A spokesperson from the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs told Sky News that they are “open to any practical solutions that address the crisis on the ground” and are “happy” to talk to the GHF.

The spokeswoman added that the aid distribution in Gaza was not “currently a dignified process and that the format doesn’t follow humanitarian principles”.

She said that people have to walk for miles, and that there is no scalability, with aid not reaching everyone in need.

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Japan executes ‘Twitter killer’ who murdered and dismembered nine people

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1 day ago

June 27, 2025

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Japan executes 'Twitter killer' who murdered and dismembered nine people

A man guilty of murdering nine people, most of whom had posted suicidal thoughts on social media, has been executed in Japan.

Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the “Twitter killer”, was sentenced to death in 2020 for the 2017 killings of the nine victims, who he also dismembered in his apartment near Tokyo.

His execution was the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years and it was carried out as calls grow to abolish the measure in Japan since the acquittal of the world’s longest-serving death-row inmate Iwao Hakamada last year.

He was freed after 56 years on death row, following a retrial which heard police had falsified and planted evidence against him over the 1966 murders of his boss, wife and two children.

Eight of Shiraishi’s victims were women, including teenagers, who he killed after raping them. He also killed a boyfriend of one of the women to silence him.

Police arrested him in 2017 after finding the bodies of eight females and one male in cold-storage cases in his apartment.

Investigators said Shiraishi approached the victims via Twitter, offering to assist them with their suicidal wishes.

Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi’s hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict’s “extremely selfish” motive for crimes that “caused great shock and unrest to society”.

“It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed,” Mr Suzuki said.

There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.