The government has today announced a set of asylum reforms aimed at reducing arrivals and increasing removals from the UK in a bid to fix what Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has called a “broken” system.
While she stressed that the UK will always offer sanctuary to those fleeing danger, Mahmood set out that some people, nonetheless, seek to abuse the system, and the impact on the country has been “profound”.
Here are some of the measures announced:
- Refugee status will become temporary with regular reviews every 30 months. People could therefore be returned to their home country when it is deemed “safe”
- Human Rights Law will be reconsidered, including narrowing how the right to family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is applied in migration court cases
- Guaranteed housing and weekly pay will end for some asylum seekers – including those who have permission to work, who have committed a crime or have defied removal directions; support will still be available for “those who are destitute”
- New safe and legal routes to the UK will be established along with an annual cap on arrivals via these routes
- New technologies will strengthen enforcement – including trials of AI-driven technology to verify the age of asylum seekers
Presenting plans to the House of Commons this evening, Mahmood received some push back from other parties.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch praised the focus on the issue, but said the government’s measures don’t go far enough, while Liberal Democrat spokesperson Max Wilkinson criticised the rhetoric used, which described the country as “being torn apart” by immigration. For Reform UK, Danny Kruger suggested Labour was sounding more like his own party – before saying that they would implement stricter policies.
We’re now ending our live coverage, but you can stay across further updates in our main news story, or read our political reporter’s assessment of the six key takeaways from today’s announcement.