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Lord Sentamu (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 8 July 2025

Debate

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Contribution

My Lords, first of all, I want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady May, for getting legislation about modern slavery on to the statute books. I want to say thank you very much, because we have people—some from my own country—coming here under that very disheartening reality. The second thing I want to mention is what the noble Baroness did with the Hillsborough inquiry. She resolved a lot of pain for a lot of people in Liverpool, so I wanted to say thank you for that. The question I want to ask is this. Under Amendment 47, the line of defence would be that they were “acting under the duress of slavery”. What about a member of one of these criminal gangs that are bringing people over? They could easily say as their defence, “I was under duress when I did what I have done”. What would be the response to such a line of defence?

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