Recommendation 4

We also heard that the Bill is likely to have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups, including victims of trafficking and modern slavery, children, and LGBTQIA+ people. Given this, it is unfortunate that the Home Office has failed to publish the relevant impact assessments before the Bill concluded its Commons Stages. Those impact assessments are crucial to enable effective and full scrutiny of the Bill, and to enable an assessment of its impacts on vulnerable groups, and of how the Government has reached the conclusion (contrary to the weight of evidence that we have heard) that the Bill will achieve its stated aims, what other alternative methods it has considered to stop people making dangerous journeys, and why it deemed the Bill to be preferable to those alternatives.