That this House regrets that the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 1691), published on 5 March, fails to provide a credible plan for bringing down the asylum backlog and closing asylum hotels, including the provision of safe routes for refugees to enter the UK; risks increasing the bureaucratic burden on the Home Office and costs for taxpayers; further disincentivises proper integration of refugees; will force vulnerable asylum seekers into destitution and rough sleeping; and will place significant financial and operational burdens onto already overstretched local authorities.
Relevant document: 56th report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
My Lords, I must declare my interest: I am supported by RAMP. That has always been a mystery to some people. It is the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy, so that Members can understand.
This regret Motion concerns a statement of changes to the Immigration Rules laid before the House on 5 March. I do not expect that this debate will be quite as well-natured as the previous one because this piece of secondary legislation has resulted in one of the most excoriating reports from our Select Committee that I have ever seen. Its 15 pages can be summed up in a few words: piecemeal, ill thought-out and lacking in evidence. Add to that the financial assertions made by the Government that have now been blown out of the water and we have a policy for which we will surely pay a sad and unnerving price in both financial and human capital terms.
The Government may have pushed back implementation, but the start date of 2 March in this legislation and the retrospective laws that lie behind it are already on the statute book. The statement of changes represents a fundamental shift in the way that this country provides sanctuary to people in need, yet it has been introduced without meaningful parliamentary scrutiny. It risks placing additional strain on an already overburdened Home Office system but, critically, at the same time it takes a less humane approach to protection.
These changes, by a piece of secondary legislation under the negative procedure, will affect more than 1 million people in this country, and I must say that that is a conservative estimate. Many of these are working people contributing to the economy of our country and many are children, yet, despite the scale of these changes, the statement offers no credible plan for tackling the asylum backlog or preventing dangerous journeys. The changes do not expand safe routes for refugees. They also undermine integration by denying those granted protection the certainty needed to rebuild their lives.
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We should learn lessons from this evidence. Refugees already face considerable barriers when attempting to rebuild their lives after conflict and displacement. Stability is not a luxury in this context; it is a prerequisite for successful integration. If our objective is to enable refugees to contribute to society—to work, to support their families and to become part of the communities in which they live—then policies that foster anxiety and despair will undermine social cohesion rather than advance it. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government have evidence from other countries regarding the employment outcomes for refugees with temporary status?
Reducing the leave granted to refugees is also unlikely to act as a deterrent. The UNHCR has observed that there is little evidence that policies of this kind have any meaningful effect on where refugees eventually, and ultimately, seek asylum.
Alongside this, the practical consequences for the Home Office itself should not be underestimated. Reprocessing claims on such a frequent cycle will inevitably increase bureaucracy and the administrative burden. It will place further strain on an already overstretched asylum system and increase costs for the taxpayer. Refugee Council analysis estimates that this policy could require the Home Office to review about 1.9 million cases over the first 10 years of it being in place, at a cost of £1.27 billion—an astonishing sum for a policy that undermines integration prospects, as well as Home Office efficiency. Can the Minister tell the House whether the Government can and will provide an impact assessment for those changes being made now that includes both an estimate of the additional workload and how it would be resourced?
I turn to safe routes. A glaring omission from the Government’s approach as set out in this statement of changes is the absence of meaningful legal pathways for those seeking refuge. When safe routes do not exist, people do not simply abandon their search for safety. Instead, they are forced into the hands of smugglers and traffickers. Safe routes are not a soft option. They are a practical tool for managing migration in an orderly and humane way. They allow Governments to retain control over who arrives and how, while reducing the incentive for dangerous and irregular journeys. Yet at the very moment when new safe routes are not operational, these changes close down an existing pathway to protection by introducing visa brakes for students from Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar and Cameroon. All these countries are on the International Rescue Committee’s emergency watch list of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, yet even female Chevening scholars in Afghanistan, who face a real risk of persecution, will not be able to come to the UK to study.
The 1951 refugee convention also recognises and protects refugees sur place, or those who are in need of protection due to events occurring after they have left their home country. With these changes, the United Kingdom is undermining its international obligations and turning its back on people in need who could make a positive contribution.
Let me address the issue of destitution. The changes to the Immigration Rules revoke a duty on the Government to offer support to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. These changes carry consequences that are both moral and financial. If the system becomes more restrictive without becoming more efficient, we risk pushing vulnerable asylum seekers into destitution. When support structures break down, the result can be rough sleeping, exploitation and increased pressure on charities and local authorities. Too often, local authorities are asked to absorb the practical consequences of national policy without the resources required to manage them. Destitution is not an immigration policy; it is a failure of administration and humanity.
Finally, I turn to the question of our international obligations. Some 75 years ago, British lawyers played a leading role in shaping the 1951 refugee convention. That convention emerged from the ashes of the Second World War, born of a determination that the persecution and displacement suffered by millions should never be repeated. Its purpose was simple but profound: that those with a well-founded fear of persecution should be able to find sanctuary beyond the borders of their own country. The architects of the convention recognised that protection was not intended to be merely temporary. They therefore placed clear obligations on states to facilitate the integration and eventual naturalisation of refugees in the countries that offered them asylum.
It is against that history and that spirit that the changes before us today must be judged. In my view, they sit uneasily with the principles that Britain itself helped to establish. We can have firm borders and compassionate policies that uphold our international obligations. We can design a system that works both for those seeking refuge and for the communities that welcome them. But to achieve that, we need policies grounded in evidence, practicality and fairness. These changes to the Immigration Rules do little to advance such a policy. This Government’s attempt to tack to a Tory/Reform position is more than regressive; it is a policy which treats people who already contribute to our society in a shameful way and it will cost us dearly. The Government should withdraw these changes and return with new proposals. I beg to move.
My Lords, I start by thanking the various organisations that have sent us enormously helpful briefings and, of course, the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has produced a pretty devastating report on the whole process.
I was very surprised when I learned that there is no ability in the House of Commons to have a debate on this issue. Frankly, I could not believe it, but I have discussed it with various MPs, who said there is no possibility for the elected House to debate this issue. These are not trivial changes; they are quite fundamental to the way in which we deal with asylum seekers and refugees, and they are too complicated as changes for the procedure that is open even to us in this House. At least we can have a debate, but we have to have a Second Reading debate and a debate on detailed changes all in one go, which is really not very satisfactory. If we had a proper Bill, we could have probing amendments to test the strength of the arguments. As it is, the only option is a Motion of this sort to enable any debate to take place at all. I would have welcomed a chance to table probing amendments on a whole range of these issues. We are dealing with what is the material for an important Bill. So, I shall not be asking for the opinion of the House, but I hope that our comments today will influence government thinking. I think that is the best we can do with the procedure that is open to us.
Of course, we are dealing with an issue that is going to be with us for many years to come, because with the turmoil in the Middle East and in other countries as well, we must expect more people to be on the move. It is important that we manage the results of such movements in a dignified way, consistent with our international obligations and commitments, and that we do it in such a way that we do not forget that human rights matter.
I will avoid speaking as if we were now in Committee or on Report; instead, I will mention just a few of the issues. I welcome the extension to the Ukrainian scheme—that is good. Many of us have been arguing for that for some time, and it is very welcome that the Government are doing it.
It is daunting to follow two such experts on the subject. I cannot match their eloquence, but, like them, I feel strongly that these rule changes are wrong. Some of them, we have to admit, we were warned of in the White Paper, which we discussed on 17 November. Even so, there are some surprises.
Refusing to issue visas to enable Sudanese and Afghan students to come here is new and startlingly insensitive, given that Afghan women aged 12 and over are barred from any form of education back home and that in Sudan there is the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis. It is catastrophic and heartbreaking, as the Leader of the House correctly described it earlier this afternoon. Refusing even skilled worker visas to Afghans looks very like washing our hands of a mess that is partly of our making.
In November, the Home Secretary said,
“we will create a new … visa route, solely for refugees, with a quicker path to permanent settlement”.
Where is that new route? It is not there. It is not in today’s ragbag of changes. Instead, the door is slammed shut on students from Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Cameroon.
Undoubtably the most significant change—and it was foreshadowed—is the new requirement for reassessments of refugee status for all refugees every 30 months for up to 20 years. This will do huge damage. It will hurt the people concerned, making their integration much harder. It will make it harder for them to get accommodation, it will make their children’s education harder and it will be harder for them to look for a job, which we allow a refugee to do only if the asylum application has been outstanding for over 12 months through no fault of their own. It will make it harder for them to progress in work, because employers will not invest in training workers whose right to remain here is so temporary and transitory.
My Lords, I too declare an interest as a RAMP associate.
The changes to asylum law, triggered by the statement of changes, was heralded by the Home Secretary as
“the most significant reform to our migration system in modern times”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/11/25; col. 509.]
This is echoed in the Explanatory Memorandum’s explanation that this
“marks the start of introducing a new regime”.
Yet without these regret Motions, which I very much welcome, we would not even be debating this fundamental change from what the EM describes as
“an assumption of offering permanent protection … towards a more basic, and temporary protection”.
Surely, as has already been said, in the name of democratic accountability, such a significant change merits primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny in both Houses.
It is the change to the basic asylum protection that will be my main focus, but I echo my noble friend’s welcome to the extension of the Ukraine scheme and his Motion’s concern about the visa brake’s prevention of educational opportunities, including for Chevening scholars. I will leave it to colleagues to say more about this, but I simply wish to raise the question of the lack of a published equality impact assessment.
The response to my Written Question about vulnerable women from Sudan and Afghanistan who had already been selected for scholarships completely ignored the gender dimension mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. The cursory treatment of equalities in the general impact assessment displayed total ignorance of the position of women and our responsibilities under the UN’s women, peace and security agenda, for which we are penholders.
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Our Select Committee and others have warned that, in making these changes to the Immigration Rules, the Home Office is introducing measures before their impact can be known, so avoiding a more complex legislative process and the scrutiny that comes with it. Changes of this scale deserve proper debate and examination by Parliament, particularly where they affect the security and stability of individuals who have been recognised as being in need of refuge. These Motions are a poor substitute for scrutiny, especially as key information is either being withheld or not available. If the Government are serious about clearing the asylum backlog, the focus should be on improving decision-making capacity, reducing unnecessary procedural barriers and ensuring that claims are processed quickly and fairly. What we are seeing here, though, risks achieving the opposite.
I begin with the change to the length of protection granted to refugees, reduced from five years to two and a half. Sadly, the reality is that warfare is often protracted. The brutal civil war in Sudan is now in its third year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is in its fifth and the war in Syria lasted more than 13. Conflicts rarely end after 13 months, and it can take many more years before infrastructure and capacity allow for large-scale voluntary returns.
Introducing temporary protection for refugees would therefore leave families in a state of fear and limbo, with worrying consequences for being able to integrate. Temporary protection is likely to have an acute impact on the well-being of refugee children, who need stability as they recover and rebuild their lives. Repeated reviews will disrupt educational attainment and the ability to secure home tuition fee status. Temporary protection is also likely to delay family reunion. This could push more families towards dangerous journeys, given that 90% of refugee family reunion visas were previously granted to women and children.
This uncertainty has tangible effects. Although the United Kingdom rightly provided a vital lifeline to those fleeing the war in Ukraine, evidence from the British Red Cross found that the temporary nature of their status meant that Ukrainians were turned down for jobs, even when they were well qualified, because employers were concerned about the short duration of their visas. Landlords were reluctant to offer longer-term tenancies and displaced Ukrainians have remained significantly more likely to become homeless than the general population. Significantly, tightening the settlement rules in Denmark—the Government have taken some view on the success of that—has in fact reduced refugees’ employment levels.
My sense of what we have before us is that we are dealing with a lot of piecemeal changes—not a total, whole approach to a difficult issue. I have the impression that the issues have not been all that well considered. Indeed, in saying that, I am supported by the report by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which stated that
“we found the answers unhelpful”
and that the Home Office has
“not fully thought through the implications of the policy”.
That is a serious criticism, not from a party point of view but from the point of view of good governance and how subordinate legislation should be handled.
I have also read the reports from NGOs and other organisations, which clearly regret that there was not enough consultation for them to have an input into the whole process. The belief is that, if they had had more input, the changes proposed would have been better thought out and more substantially based. For example, to review asylum applications regularly will need more overall capacity in the Home Office. We have heard over the years, throughout successive Governments, that the Home Office has not, until now, had that capacity. I welcome the changes that have taken place in the Home Office—it is making asylum decisions much quicker than before and the backlog is being dealt with—but now we will have proposals that will move the whole process the other way and will put extra pressure on it. It is difficult to believe that a two-and-a-half-year assessment can happen without additional resource needs. What assessment have the Government made of the needs that will stem from the proposals we have before us?
Under the current system, the Home Office usually makes one further decision on refugee status after someone is initially granted protection, but under these proposals, there could be many decisions. One opinion is that it could happen as many as eight different times. The problem is that this will impose burdens on legal aid, if there is any legal aid available. The Government could be reasonably asked to identify what legal aid needs there will be, to ensure that those granted refugee status will be able to access legal aid during the review period, because every review period will challenge the right of people to stay in this country and their whole futures will depend on it. Frequent housing moves can have a very disruptive effect on education and on children who are trying to be settled in a new country, which will all lead to instability. People living in this country, who are feeling unstable and uncertain about their futures, cannot make the sort of contribution to our society that we would like them to make.
The result is that there will be tensions with the refugee convention, under which the United Kingdom has agreed to facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees—we are going against that part of the refugee convention. I know that there are other challenges to the refugee convention, but I hope that we will firmly stand by it. Has any assessment been made by the Government of the impact of the reduced length of leave on integration outcomes? What we really need is an overall integration policy. Integration is a difficult thing to achieve, so we need a policy for the integration of people in our society.
Finally, I will talk about family reunions and children. Family reunion applications were paused from September last year. We had the understanding that they would be resumed early this year. Can the Minister say when those family reunion applications will be restarted? Have the Government assessed the impact of the pause, given that nine out of 10 visas granted before the pause went to women and children? How many refugees have applied under other family visa routes since the pause, and how many were successful?
I feel that we are turning our backs on refugee children and family reunion. They are not covered here. I would like the Government to come back and give us an idea of what policies there are going to be on family reunion, which this House has debated with a lot of emotion over the years.
I am conscious that what we do has to have public support. On the one hand, we cannot introduce policies on refugees and asylum and just ignore the concerns of the general public; on the other hand, many of the things that we have talked about in earlier speeches and now could have public support if presented sensibly. We cannot proceed with policies on asylum and refugees without public support, but we have to gain public support. That means having calm, balanced debates explaining the terrible situations that people have fled from and why it is right that we, among other countries, should provide safety for people whose human rights have been so severely prejudiced.
In another of today’s changes, we twist the knife by imposing a new ban on refugees taking low-paid jobs, precisely the jobs in construction, social care, farming and nursing where the real shortages are. Why do we have to be so cruel, and at such cost to ourselves? Apart from the Exchequer costs discussed by the noble Lord, Lord German, of putting refugees through up to eight or nine reassessments, think of the economic activity foregone and the taxes foregone. It is an own goal. It is bad for the country, as well as being bad for the refugees. I hope it is true that some in government are urging the Home Secretary to reconsider.
For me, the most striking feature of the Paisley debate among the Scottish party leaders the other night was the huge critical audience reaction to the anti-immigrant stance of the two right-wingers. The Scottish people clearly do not feel that immigrants are a threat. Of course, the population of Scotland would decline but for immigration. Immigrants seem to be welcomed in Scotland. I hope that the Labour Party will think very hard about whether the stance that has been taken by the Home Office now is a wise one. I do not think it is wise for the country and I suspect it may not be wise for the party—although that is not my business.
Finally, I will say a word about process. I am privileged to serve on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which is skilfully chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Dubs, both referred to our report on the rule changes, which drew attention, in fairly scathing terms, to the undesirability of piecemeal changes, to the absence of impact assessments for all but two of these many changes, to the lack of any consultation with outside expertise and, most surprisingly to me, to the baffling inability of Home Office officials to explain how the new rules will work and to answer our questions. Some of the questions were quite basic but we got no answers. It would be very good if the Minister, who I greatly admire, or one of his Home Office colleagues, would go through the report that the committee has produced and let it have answers to the questions that officials ducked when we raised them, and which remain open. Some sort of response to our report would be very much welcomed.
We concluded, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, noted, that
“the Home Office has not fully thought through the implications of the policy”,
and that
“the lack of an assessment of the effects of, in particular, the reduction in the duration of refugees’ permission to stay and the changes to the occupations in which they may be permitted to work makes full scrutiny of these changes impossible”.
That is our conclusion. We concluded that we could not do our job and advise the House properly on these changes. We could not do our job and so Parliament cannot do its job. Therefore, I support both regret Motions, for reasons both substantive and procedural.
We know that primary legislation is pending. It would have been so much better to wait for the primary legislation. If these changes have to happen, we must be allowed the chance to debate them properly in primary legislation, to think it through and let Parliament think it through, or, better still, to let the Home Office think again.
This raises a more general question about the lack of impact assessments for key measures, which, as we have heard, the Secondary Legislation and Scrutiny Committee advises makes full scrutiny impossible. The committee is somewhat dismissive of Minister Tapp’s assurance that the Home Office takes the provision of IAs “extremely seriously” and concludes that the Home Office may not have
“fully thought through the implications”
of the change in asylum protection.
I add my disappointment that we have not yet seen a child rights impact assessment. In response to an Oral Question, my noble friend the Minister assured me that such assessments
“will be conducted throughout the policy development process”.—[Official Report, 27/1/26; col. 763.]
But, in answer to a more recent Written Question, he emphasised:
“There is no legal requirement to publish Child Impact Assessments and to commit to do so would be premature given that for many of the measures, policy development is ongoing”.
So this new regime starts without parliamentarians and others having the necessary information to assess its effect on children and other asylum seekers. This is among the wider process concerns raised by the SLSC, including the total lack of consultation.
When asked about this, the Home Office responded:
“Given the pace of change”—
which surely the Home Office itself has set—
“it is not always possible to consult ahead of all policy reform”.
While the significance of some of the changes was accepted, the Home Office later stated that
“it is important to put that meaning into context for the change in question as those factors on their own do not always result in a justification for a public consultation”.
What on earth does that mean? I am not surprised that the SLSC was not convinced by the Home Office responses, and I sympathise with my noble friend the Minister, who has to defend the very poor case made by his department.
I turn to the substantive impact of the move towards temporary protection for refugees. The SLSC is similarly sceptical about the Home Office’s responses to its questions on employment and suggested that we might want to press further on this. Can my noble friend tell us what the evidential basis is for assuming that temporary protection status will improve refugees’ employment prospects, when organisations such as the Refugee Council, Freedom from Torture and the Helen Bamber Foundation argue the opposite in their submissions to the SLSC? Please could the Minister not respond that the expectation is that refugees will be able to switch to the new bespoke work and study route, which offers a speedier route to indefinite leave to remain, given that the Government still cannot say what the criteria for joining it will be or even when it will be introduced?
The mention of a fee and the possession of skills, together with changes to the occupations in which asylum seekers can seek work after 12 months, suggests that the work lane of this route might be open only to those who are able to access more skilled and better-paid jobs. That should be irrelevant to refugee status and would create a two-class system of refugees. If my noble friend cannot give us any details now about the work and study route, can he at least say when the Home Office hopes to make those details available?
On the related question of the permitted occupations open to asylum seekers after 12 months, while it is welcome that the number of available occupations will be increased, it is not clear why this cannot be in addition to the current rules rather than instead of them. As it is, and as the SLSC warns, it could mean that fewer asylum seekers are able to find work and, as we have heard, it also closes off the social care sector to them, which could have significant effects. Its report says that the Home Office has not engaged with this point, so I hope my noble friend will do so now and will also commit to monitoring the effects of the change, as called for by the SLSC.
Employment is an important element of integration, which we have heard about, which the EM, echoing Ministers, states is a key aim of this and related reforms, in line with the recently published, and welcome, social cohesion action plan. But I have not yet seen an explanation of how making refugees’ data so insecure is conducive to integration, from the point of view either of refugees themselves or of employers and landlords who might think twice, as we have heard, before taking them on. This is certainly not the view of organisations that work with refugees, including the International Rescue Committee and the UNHCR. The latter warns:
“Providing refugees with only 30 months of leave at a time is likely to be detrimental to refugees’ sense of security, belonging and stability, factors critical to positive engagement and participation in society. Status of such a temporary nature may impact on a person’s ability to find housing, seek employment, learn English and develop skills, and risks undermining the Government’s intention to enhance refugees’ ability to contribute to their new communities”.