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Church Leaders Urge Changes to Borders Bill

Wednesday April 20 2022

The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Lord Wallace, and 17 other Christian leaders from throughout the UK have written to MPs ahead of today’s vote on the Nationality and Borders Bill, urging them to use their influence to make changes to the Bill.

The Nationality and Borders Bill is due to come before MPs this afternoon (April 20), to allow them to vote on amendments proposed by the House of Lords. The Bill is in its final stages and continues to be backed by the government, despite having suffered multiple defeats in the House of Lords.

In the letter the church leaders, who also include the Rev Ruth Harvey, leader of the Iona Community, say that the Bill ‘fails to uphold the principles and values of the UK by creating hostility and fostering discrimination against some of the most vulnerable people in the world’.

They continue: “Only in the last few weeks we have witnessed the seemingly limitless compassion and commitment shown by UK citizens as they have welcomed Ukrainian refugees into their lives and homes. Yet the Nationality and Borders Bill directly contradicts this approach. We find it challenging to understand how the policies within the Bill will work in practice, except that they will cause hardship, criminalise innocent people and fracture families.”

The letter urges MPs to accept the changes to the Bill passed by the Lords, which it says will ‘bring it in line with international convention, compassion and care for our common humanity’.

Read the full letter and list of signatories on the Joint Public Issues Team website.