HUMAN RIGHTS activists have slammed Rishi Sunak’s “heinous and wreckless” policy to stop migrants arriving on small boats from claiming asylum in the UK.

The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary Suella Braverman are due to formally announce the plans under the Illegal Immigration Bill in an effort to tackle illegal migration later this week.

The hardline police will ban anyone arriving on small boats across the English Channel to Britain from seeking asylum. Once removed from the country, they will also be prohibited from ever returning for a better life.

The government wants to enact its policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda after the “inhumane” policy was drafted under the former Home Secretary Priti Patel. However, no refugees have actually been sent to restart their lives in the African country after facing backlash from human rights groups and the courts.

Activists have now condemned the new bill as “tramping” on international human rights and have pledged to mobilise opposition. 

Weyman Bennett, co convenor of Stand Up To Racism, said the new police was another “unthinkably heinous” attempt by the PM and Home Secretary that was hauling narratives around asylum seekers to right-wing thinking.

“It is wholly about the demonisation and scapegoating of refugees. It is about telling us – during a cost of living crisis and when the government faces growing challenges from hundreds of thousands of workers striking – that the problem is refugees arriving by small boat,” he said. 

“This is about a government fighting to break our humanity and solidarity and replace it with the lowest, narrowest attitude to people simply looking to live in safety. 

He added: “We must stand up to racism. We must stand in solidarity with the refugees. Our government has used refugees as a human shield. We must fight back together, against all bigotry and racism.”

Clare Moseley, CEO of refugee rights charity Care4Calais, said: “If Sunak wants to stop small boats he would give safe passage to refugees in Calais. Instead he is persecuting victims of war, torture and human rights abuses while stoking devision in our communities with the use of inflammatory rhetoric.”

The former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, also joined the calls for the opposition to “fight back” against the bill’s legislation.

“Rishi Sunak’s latest asylum ban is immoral, inhumane and in breach of international law,” he wrote on Twitter. 

“We don’t need to see his Whatsapps to know why he is escalating his war on refugees: to stoke division, hatred & fear. Seeking asylum is a human right — we must fight back to protect it.”

Human rights groups including Stand Up To Racism and Care4Calais are due to take to the streets in protests across London, Glasgow and Cardiff on 18 March under the hashtag “resist racism”. 

In collaboration with the PCS civil service workers’ union, Care4Calais has also launched a policy document supported by Stand Up To Racism, the National Education Union (NEU) and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and others that puts the case of safe passage visas to provide those exercising their internationally human right to seek asylum away from the “threatening and traumatising” of crossing the Channel on a small boat.