Against the backdrop of the current leadership chaos engulfing Labour, in Wednesday’s King’s Speech the government announced new legislation that would ‘increase confidence in the security of the immigration and asylum systems’. A briefing document published shortly afterwards put some flesh on the bones, revealing that a package of contentious measures first floated by the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, in November last year would be taken forward in a Bill.
No. 10 has described the proposals as the ‘most significant’ on asylum ‘in a generation’. They include plans to ‘introduce a new asylum model based on contribution, integration and respect for UK laws’.
While detail remains scant, the Home Office indicates that it will introduce ‘a single “core protection” model’, designed to simplify decision-making, reduce the number of legal challenges, and cut costs by incentivising refugees to work. It also promises to ‘define in law when protection can be revoked’ and to require asylum seekers who receive taxpayer-funded accommodation and other support to ‘contribute to the cost borne by the British taxpayer once they are able to do so’.
The real challenge for Mahmood will not be in altering the mood music, but rather in delivery
Further measures include the creation of a new appeal body, which the government claims will ‘deliver an appeals system that is fast, fair and restores public confidence’. The new system would be staffed by what are described as ‘professionally trained adjudicators’ rather than the current immigration judges.
Quite what will happen to the current immigration judges is unclear. It will be interesting to see whether they receive offers of redeployment, whether they are simply rebadged as ‘adjudicators’, or whether their roles become redundant. Expect outraged complaints about judicial independence if the last option is chosen.
The government has also said that it will tighten the application of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to private and family life) to ‘prevent exploitation of the system’, ‘ensure that the public interest carries proper weight in immigration decisions’, and ‘prevent dubious legal challenges on the grounds of family life’. This change is likely to tie into international efforts to reform the ECHR currently under discussion in Moldova this week.
Finally, these proposals are also intended to ‘reform the modern slavery legislative framework’ and, in the rather deathless prose of the Home Office, address the ‘late presentation of modern slavery experience’. One assumes that this will include measures to prevent people from raising the issue of modern slavery only once they have exhausted all other appeal rights.
The Home Office briefed that this is all necessary because UK asylum claims are up 74 per cent since 2021 and asylum support is currently costing £4 billion a year. It also acknowledged that claims under Article 8 of the ECHR were frustrating efforts to deport individuals, noting that these rights are being used to prevent the removal of people living in the UK illegally.
While many of these reforms could be taken forward without primary legislation, the government is wise to introduce them through a government Bill. If they are enacted following full debate and a vote in Parliament, it will be much harder for them to be challenged in the courts. Their inclusion in statute would give them added legitimacy, and they could not simply be struck down by the judiciary (although this would not preclude challenges at the Strasbourg Court).
Unsurprisingly, these proposals have already come in for criticism by immigration lawyers. Colin Yeo, a barrister at Garden Court chambers, has argued that the proposal requiring asylum seekers to contribute to state costs once they are able to do so is ‘insane, utterly impractical and obviously massively unfair’. (Try telling that to a young person faced with repaying student loans at commercial interest rates.)
More reasonably, Yeo has highlighted the fact that, while the government claims the legislation will enable the ‘immediate forced removal of those who have exhausted all appeals’, it has provided no detail as to how this will occur. This is particularly crucial given that many of the principal obstacles to removing illegal migrants are delays within the Home Office and the refusal of some countries to accept them. The latter issue might be addressed by refusing visas to individuals from such countries. But it is clear that the government will not enable removals simply by waving a magic legislative wand.
As always, the devil will be in the detail. Given significant dissent on the Labour backbenches towards the proposals announced in November last year, it is hard to envisage that this new Bill will get an easy ride in parliament. The internal machinations of any Labour leadership changes could also derail the proposals. Nonetheless, securing legislative time during this period of domestic political turmoil could be seen as a win for Shabana Mahmood, making it more difficult for any potential successor to Keir Starmer to row back from these migration reforms.
The difference in tone towards issues relating to asylum, immigration and human rights under this Labour administration compared to previous ones is stark. These issues are now portrayed as problems to be solved. But it is worth recalling that we have seen all of this before. Twenty years ago, David Blunkett and John Reid famously attempted to clamp down on illegal migration, with the latter arguing that the system was ‘not fit for purpose’.
The real challenge for Mahmood will not be in altering the mood music, but rather in delivery. She must ensure a reduction in the number of individuals arriving and create a genuine sense that deportations of foreign criminals and those whose claims are refused do not end up stuck in a legal quagmire.
Comments