Immigration Bill Faces the Commons as 80 Labour MPs Rebel
The government’s Immigration and Asylum Bill reaches its second reading in the Commons this afternoon, and it lands as the first real test of Andy Burnham’s incoming leadership. Almost eighty Labour MPs have written to the prime minister-in-waiting urging him to soften the reforms, which would make most migrants wait twice as long for permanent settlement and require asylum seekers to repay some accommodation costs once working. The signatories warn the “hostile rhetoric” is playing into Reform’s hands; Burnham backed the measures during his campaign.
The revolt is the shape of the fight to come. Burnham arrives without a contest and with a promise of fiscal discipline, but his party’s left expects a break from the immigration hard line the outgoing government adopted to blunt Reform, and the letter is a shot across his bow before he has taken office. He is caught between a Makerfield electorate that backed Brexit and wants control, and a parliamentary party that calls the approach cruel and counter-productive. The Bill itself, drawn up by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, doubles the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain and claws back asylum-accommodation costs, and it carries contested modern-slavery provisions too. How Burnham handles today’s vote and the revolt behind it will set the early terms of his leadership. Watch the size of any Labour rebellion or abstention, whether ministers offer concessions, and how Burnham signals his hand.