Newcastle City Council calls for rejection of Nationality and Borders Bill as Ukranian refugee numbers pass 1 million

Cllr Robin Ashby seconded a cross-party motion passed unanimously last night by Newcastle City Council.

He said : There are things that decent human beings need to stand together for, such as the unfolding Ukraine tragedy. That's why I'm grateful to Cllr Shatwell for inviting me to second this motion, which I gladly do on behalf of the Liberal Democrats Opposition.

And thank you Lord Mayor for taking up my suggestion of writing a letter of solidarity to Mykola Borovets, Mayor of Novograd-Volynsky in Ukraine, a member of the Newcastles of the World.

Like me, Councillors may have had emails from local people asking what they can do to help. Can they offer refugees a bed? That is the open hearts of the British speaking, not the mean and narrow minded approach seen in the Nationality and Borders Bill. I know that many Labour and Liberal Democrats peers have been fighting it line by line in Parliament, especially in the House of Lords.

It cannot bear repeating enough that when you are fleeing for safety, you have no time to apply for a visa. Lack of a piece of paper must not stop us helping people reach safety from death or oppression.

One of my early memories is of Hungarian refugees who came to this country fleeing Russian tanks crushing their attempts to win freedom and democracy only a decade after the horrors of Nazi occupation and extermination.

Many of those people built a new life in our country and have contributed hugely to our civilisation. And so it has been with every wave of refugees.

Our country and our city have a proud history of offering sanctuary to people in need, of whom the Ukrainians sadly are only the most recent.

It is reported that the government will spend £2.7bn on implementing the Nationality and Borders bill if passed into law, but it is already spending more than that on existing policies.

Even at its crassest, there are billions that could be saved if it stopped detaining people in immigration detention centres and housed them in the community instead. If it allowed asylum seekers the right to work. If it stopped refusing so many applications, only to have to spend money on defending those decisions and losing over half the cases. If it was more efficient and made faster, fairer decisions.

I have no time left to detail the iniquities in the current refugee legislation, except to say the Bill the Home Secretary is pushing through Parliament will undermine our obligation to give all who seek sanctuary a fair hearing on our soil, by discriminating against refugees depending on how they reach here. It must be rethought urgently. It diminishes not just its authors but all of us.