Celebrities have put their weight behind a campaign to amend a controversial Bill dealing with asylum seekers.

They joined campaign groups, under the slogan Protect Not Punish, sailing on a vessel The Edwardian along the River Thames today (Wednesday) and passing the Houses of Parliament.

This was to call on MPs to alter the Nationality and Borders Bill, which has been timetabled to clear its last hurdle next week.

The major names involved included supermodel and activist Lily Cole, barrister and TV personality Robert Rinder, actress Juliet Stevenson, broadcaster Deborah Francis White, writer Kathy Lette and Irish-Iranian comedian Patrick Monahan.

Ms Stevenson attended the event with Dartsa and her daughter, Ukrainian refugees she is hosting.

Dartsa said: "The changes the government wants to make to how the UK treats refugees like us makes me very sad.

"Nobody should be punished when they have already had to escape such terrible things as we have. I would want everyone who arrives to receive the warmth and kindness that we have."

This initiative involves Kent Refugee Action Network and Together With Refugees, a coalition of more than 400 organisations across the country.

The campaigners in particular want the scrapping of the proposal to punish refugees who have made desperate journeys to get to the UK.

They say that if the Bill was already law, Ukrainian refugees forced to make their own way to the UK could be denied their fundamental rights under the UN refugee convention.

They could be returned to where they had travelled from, sent to Rwanda or even imprisoned.

Among those speaking out was KRAN ambassador Rishan Tsegay Belete from Eritrea. She arrived in the UK in 2015 via Calais when she was 17.

She said of the Bill: "It will stop individuals like me who came the same way accessing the services that I did such as education, safe home and human rights.

"One of the many things that makes this Bill so wrong is because it suggests that there are legal ways to come but I was living in Eritrea and it was impossible to find a legal way to come to the UK because it is a dictatorship."

A fellow ambassador is Mohammed Alzarae from Syria who came to the UK in 2019 as part of a resettlement scheme.

He commented: "Of course it is better to come a legal way like I did but it's very difficult to get here this way. It is like winning the lottery - it's almost impossible and you have to be very lucky.

"I have friends who have been waiting for years.

"When people are fleeing for their lives they don't have the time to get the money and the papers that they need for this process.

"They still need help. They still need to be safe. If the Government really wants people to come a better way then they must give them the chance to do that. This Bill makes it even more difficult. "

Bridget Chapman from KRAN said "We were really proud to be part of today's event and to stand alongside all the amazing members of the Together With Refugees coalition who stand for kindness and decency.

" I'm always impressed by our ambassadors who do a brilliant job speaking out on behalf of young refugees. Their voices really matter."

The Nationality and Borders Bill is spearheaded by Home Secretary Priti Patel. It is in particular to deal with the boatloads of asylum seekers who at times daily cross the Channel from France to reach the UK.

The Government says it is trying to stop illegal and dangerous crossings by people coming from an already safe country.

The Bill has been going through Parliament, including with Lords debates, since last July and was passed in the Commons last December,

Its final scheduled hurdle is discussions in the House of Commons for amendments next Tuesday.

If that is cleared in time it will receive Royal Assent and then become an Act of Parliament.

The Royal Navy has since the Easter weekend taken charge of initially dealing with the crossings, a task until now handled by Border Force.

Just last Thursday Prime Minister Boris Johnson came to Lydd to announce a deal with Rwanda to detain and fly asylum seekers more than 4,000 miles on chartered planes to that country.

For the last four years the trend has been for asylum seekers to try to teach the UK in small craft, some landing in places such as Kingsdown near Deal and Dungeness.

Those rescue at sea in English waters are usually brought initially to Dover Western Docks and then taken to Manston for processing.

Government figures confirm that there were 28,526 people detected arriving on small boats in 2021. This compares with 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018.

The problem continues to this day with regular crossings reported by locals during the Easter Bank Holiday.

Official figures of numbers crossing are now from the Ministry of Defence.

Its initial statistics for yesterday (Tuesday) say that 263 asylum seekers were detected in seven small craft.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Nationality and Borders Bill will expand the number of safe and legal routes to the UK while cracking down illegal immigration which leaves vulnerable people to the mercy of evil people smugglers.

“The UK has a proud history of welcoming those in need and to suggest there are no safe and legal routes is completely wrong. We have welcomed hundreds of thousands of people to the UK, from Hong Kong and Afghanistan and recently Ukraine, in addition to more than 40,000 people through our refugee family reunion rules – which is available around the world.”

The Home Office stresses that just recently it has provided more than 97,000 Hong Kong nationals protection under the British National (Overseas) route.

In addition more than 50,000 people have been granted visas under the Family and Homes for Ukraine Schemes.

The hard line Taliban took over Afghanistan last August and the British Government will be welcoming up to 20,000 people through the Afghanistan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.

In addition and more than 7000 people have been relocated under The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP).

The Home Office also says that the Syrian Resettlement Scheme provided protection to 20,000 people, so they could rebuild their lives here and more than 40,000 Family Reunion visas have been issued to refugees since 2015.

It adds that since 2015 the UK has offered a place to more than 185,000 men, women and children seeking refuge, which is more than any other similar resettlement scheme in Europe.

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