Reverend Richard Coles has launched a blistering attack on the government’s “morally indefensible” immigration crackdown.
The popular writer and radio presenter did not hold back when he appeared on the BBC’s Question Time last night.
His comments echoed those of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who described the government’s controversial Illegal Migration Bill as “morally unacceptable” earlier this week.
Under the draft legislation, anyone arriving in the UK via illegal means - such as across the English Channel on small boats - would be deported and banned from ever returning.
Giving his views on the policy, Coles said: “I think the bill is politically unworkable, I think it is legally doubtful and I think it is morally indefensible.
“I think it’s morally indefensible because I think it effectively cuts off routes for asylum seekers - genuine asylum seekers - to find asylum in this country.
“Everybody says we must do absolutely everything we can to stop the terrible journeys on small boats landing on this coast on which I live and that’s absolutely right.
“I think the way to do that is to go after people traffickers and it’s not to penalise the people who are seeking to escape from unimaginably tough circumstances in all sorts of places around the world to come here.”
Coles said there were not enough “safe and legal routes” for asylum seekers to come to the UK.
“To make them, if they arrive illegally, therefore inadmissible as asylum claimants, seems to me to be the morally indefensible part of it,” he said.
“We owe them that. I think it demeans us if we don’t offer that, and also it’s legally very dodgy it seems to me under the Convention on Human Rights.”
The government bill was described as a “low point” for the UK and “inhumane” by angry peers in the House of Lords on Wednesday.
Its critics included Justin Welby, who said: “It is isolationist, it is morally unacceptable and politically impractical to let the poorest countries deal with [the refugee crisis] alone and cut our international aid.”