The Home Secretary has announced important plans for the biggest overhaul of the UK’s asylum system in decades, namely the Government’s New Plan for Immigration. This will strengthen safe and legal routes, while toughening border protection and improving removals of those with no right to be in the UK. For the first time, how people enter the UK will directly impact the status of their asylum claim and right to stay.
The New Plan for Immigration sets out how this Government will control and further prevent illegal immigration, now the UK has taken back control of legal immigration to our country following our Withdrawal from the EU, through the introduction of a new, points-based immigration system.
The current system is collapsing under the pressures of illegal routes to asylum, facilitated by criminals smuggling people into the UK and too often resulting in the loss of life. At the heart of this New Plan for Immigration is a simple principle: fairness. Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not on the ability to pay people smugglers.
The New Immigration Plan has three main objectives:
- Firstly, to increase the fairness and efficacy of our system so that we can better protect and support those in genuine need of refuge.
- Secondly, to deter illegal entry into the UK, thereby breaking the business model of people smuggling networks and protecting the lives of those they endanger.
- Thirdly, to more easily remove those with no right to be here from the UK
For the first time, whether people enter the UK legally or illegally will have an impact on how their asylum claim progresses, and on their status in the UK if that claim is successful. Those who prevail with claims having entered illegally, will receive a new temporary protection status, rather than an automatic right to settle and will be regularly reassessed for removal from the UK. People entering illegally will have limited family reunion rights, as well as limited access to benefits.
For people who have their cases considered, but refused, the Government will seek rapid removal to their country of origin and will also reform the appeals and judicial process to speed up removals.
Refugees in need of protection will continue to be resettled through work with international organisations who provide a safe and legal route to the UK for people fleeing persecution in their home countries. This refined approach will be more responsive to persecuted minorities and emerging international crises, resettling refugees who are at urgent risk far more quickly.
The Home Secretary will also have the ability to grant humanitarian protection to vulnerable individuals in immediate danger and at risk in their home country.
I know how frustrated some of my constituents have been about small boats illegally arriving to the UK over the last year. Last year, 8,500 people arrived into the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats - with the majority claiming asylum. The current system rewards these people while some of the most vulnerable, including women and children, never make it to the UK. This New Plan for Immigration will ensure these perilous and illegal journeys to the UK via safe countries, in which people should and could have claimed asylum, are no longer worth the risk, whilst ensuring the world’s most vulnerable can still seek refuge.
In her statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday (March 24th), my colleague, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel MP, said:
“Under our New Plan for Immigration, if people arrive illegally, they will no longer have the same entitlements as those who arrive legally, and it will be harder for them to stay.
“If, like over 60 per cent of illegal arrivals, they have travelled through a safe country like France to get here, they will not have immediate entry into the asylum system - which is what happens today.
“And we will stop the most unscrupulous abusing the system by posing as children, by introducing tougher, more accurate age assessments.
“Profiteering from illegal migration to Britain will no longer be worth the risk, with new maximum life sentences for people smugglers.
“I make no apology for these actions being firm, but as they will also save lives and target people smugglers, they are also undeniably fair.”
The Hansard link to the Home Secretary’s statement can be found here https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-03-24/debates/464FFFBB-ECA5-4788-BC36-60F8B7D8D9D1/NewPlanForImmigration?highlight=immigration#contribution-68F5742C-496D-4D1D-A243-F611F724FC0C
Measures announced by the Home Secretary include:
- Improving support for refugees to help them build their life in the UK. We will work to ensure refugees are supported and able to integrate into our communities so that they can become self-sufficient members of our society.
- Developing reception centres for asylum seekers. These centres will provide simple, safe and secure accommodation to stay in while their claims are being processed.
- Stopping people being granted refugee status based on unsubstantiated claims. We will raise the standard on what qualifies as a “well-founded fear of persecution” and make it much harder for people to be granted refugee status based on unsubstantiated claims.
- Introducing more rigorous age assessment processes. By engaging with a National Age Assessment Board we will put a stop to adult migrants pretending to be children.
- New and expanded ‘one-stop’ process to speed up asylum claims. This will ensure that asylum, human rights claims and any other protection matters are made and considered together, ahead of any appeal hearing with a new legal advice offer to support individuals in this process.
- Expanding the fixed recoverable costs regime to cover immigration and asylum judicial reviews and widening the scope of Wasted Costs Orders in asylum and immigration matters.
- Strengthening the law so that we can withhold protection and remove dangerous criminals, even when they improperly claim to be victims of modern slavery.
- New and tougher criminal offences for those attempting to enter the UK illegally. We will raise the penalty for illegal entry from 6 months’ imprisonment, introducing life sentences for people smugglers and increasing the penalty for Foreign National Offenders who return to the UK in breach of a deportation order from six months to five years’ imprisonment.