Britain will drastically reduce protections for refugees under plans to overhaul its asylum system, the Labour government has said.<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said consent for helping asylum seekers restart their lives in the UK will fall apart if the government does not do more to tackle illegal migration.<\/p>\n
She also insisted she saw her attempts to overhaul the system as part of a “moral mission” aimed at preventing division in the country.<\/p>\n
Ms Mahmood will set out reforms to the UK’s asylum system, how it decides to grant sanctuary to those fleeing conflict and hardship abroad, in the House of Commons tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Billed as the largest overhaul of its kind in modern times, the package is aimed at making Britain a less attractive destination for illegal migrants and making it easier to remove them from the UK.<\/p>\n
Refugee status will be made temporary and subject to regular review under the proposals, so that people are returned to their homeland once it becomes safe.<\/p>\n
At the same time, safe and legal routes to the UK will be introduced as a way to cut dangerous journeys in small boats across the English Channel.<\/p>\n
Speaking this morning, Ms Mahmood warned illegal migration is causing “huge divides” in Britain.<\/p>\n
She told Sky News\u2019 Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that the plans she will set out tomorrow are the “most sweeping set of reforms in modern times”.<\/p>\n
Ms Mahmood added: “Because I know illegal migration is causing huge divides here in our own country and I do believe we need to act if we are to retain public consent for having an asylum system at all.”<\/p>\n
Later, appearing on the BBC\u2019s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the Home Secretary rejected suggestions that “dealing with this problem is somehow engaging in far-right talking points”.<\/p>\n
She added: “I am the child of migrants myself, my parents came to this country lawfully in the late 60s, and in the 70s. Immigration is absolutely woven into my experience as a Brit and also that of thousands of my constituents.<\/p>\n
“This is a moral mission for me, because I can see illegal migration is tearing our country apart, it is dividing communities.”<\/p>\n
As the Government faces an increasingly restive group of Labour backbenchers, the Home Secretary added: “I know that I have to persuade people across the country, not just in Parliament, but across the country, that these are reforms that can work.”<\/p>\n
Among the other major changes set to be announced tomorrow, Ms Mahmood is set to revoke the statutory legal duty to provide asylum-seeker support, introduced in 2005 via EU law.<\/p>\n
This means housing and weekly allowances will no longer be guaranteed for asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Those who have a right to work in the UK and can support themselves, but do not, could also be denied housing and benefits because of the change, as could lawbreakers.<\/p>\n
Other changes expected to be announced include requiring judges to prioritise public safety over migrants\u2019 rights to a family life, or the risk that they will face “inhuman” treatment if returned to their home country.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, AI facial age estimate technology will be rolled out to identify migrants\u2019 age in a bid to find out whether those claiming to be children really are.<\/p>\n
Ministers have taken inspiration from the strict asylum approach taken by Denmark, where a government of the same political stripe as Labour has managed to remove incentives drawing people to the country and has increased deportations of illegal migrants.<\/p>\n
Some 39,075 people have arrived in the UK after making the journey so far this year, according to the latest Home Office figures.<\/p>\n
The arrivals have already passed the number for the whole of 2024 (36,816) and 2023 (29,437), but the number is still below the total at this point in 2022 (39,929).<\/p>\n
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp described the Government\u2019s plans as “very small steps in the right direction with a few gimmicks”.<\/p>\n
The senior Tory told Sky News: “We want no illegal immigration whatsoever.<\/p>\n
“We need to have a cap on legal inward migration each year, so the numbers are very, very dramatically lower.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain will drastically reduce protections for refugees under plans to overhaul its asylum system, the Labour government has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-144288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}