Home Secretary announces major asylum and other changes in new policy paper: “Restoring Order and Control”

Following a plethora of media briefings and coverage over the past few days, the Home Secretary has officially published her policy paper on “Restoring Order and Control: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy“. 

The paper is in three sections. Part I: Reducing arrivals, Part II: Increasing removals, and Part III: Safe and legal routes.

Part I: Reducing arrivals

This section begins with an assertion that various factors are acting as “pull factors” for people to come to the UK. These include “the generosity of refugee protection in the UK”, “the extent of support provided” to those waiting for a decision and the ability to work without permission to do so.

Extension of period needed to reach settlement from five to twenty years and “safe return” reviews every two and a half years

Then there was the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 which introduced the “two tier” system of refugee status whereby certain refugees (those deemed to have entered “illegally”) were granted two and a half years’ leave to remain. They would be eligible for settlement only under the normal long residence rules and after holding leave for ten years.

Instead of five years, refugees will be granted leave for two and a half years and will have to keep renewing this. Each time the Home Office will only grant the extension if they accept that there is still a need for protection. If it is decided that there is no longer such a need, the intention will be to remove that person. So the plan is that people will spend twenty years of their lives here living in terror of being sent back to a country where the UK has accepted that they have previously been at risk of persecution in.

If eligible, people will be able to switch into a new “protection work and study route”. This will be available to people who “obtain employment or commence study at an appropriate level and pay a fee. Once on this route, they will become eligible to ‘earn’ settlement sooner than they would under core protection alone”.

Family reunion

It seems that the intention is that family reunion will only be available to those who have moved into the work and study route. Under core protection we are told that there will be “no automatic right to family reunion”. It will still exist, but “stricter requirements will apply”. Those in the work and study routes may be subject to the same requirements to bring dependants as in other routes, presumably such as Appendix FM.

Public funds

They have also trailed changes to benefits for refugees, stating that:

we are now exploring a change to taxpayer-funded benefits to prioritise access for those who are making an economic contribution to the UK. This could see additional criteria that migrants have to meet to receive benefits and actions they need to take in order not to lose them. A consultation on this question will take place in 2026.

Asylum support

The paper goes on to say:

In doing so, we will deny support to those who have the right to work and could therefore support themselves. This would include those who enter the country on a work or student visa with permission to work before claiming asylum, or those granted permission to work where their claim has been outstanding for more than 12 months.

People without leave who have claimed asylum are able to work only after they have been waiting for a decision on their claim for over 12 months and they have applied to the Home Office for permission to work and that request has been granted. Even then, they are only allowed to work in an extremely limited number of roles.

The paper also says that support will be removed from those who “fail to abide by a removal direction”, work illegally, refuse to relocate to a different accommodation site or are disruptive in accommodation.

Removal of assets (aka “contributions mechanism”)

This proposal states that:

we will require individuals to contribute towards the cost of their asylum support where they have some assets or income, but not enough to support themselves independently. We will also take action to recover support costs in scenarios where any assets are not convertible into cash or declared at the point that asylum support is initially provided but become convertible or are discovered at a later date.

Part II: Increasing removals

Removing failed asylum seekers

The paper says that the UK/France pilot will be continued, but with a “higher appetite” for removing people, apparently. It also says that removals to certain countries will be resumed and say that they have already started returning a small number of Syrians.

It refers to several European countries beginning “voluntary removals”, so presumably at this stage the UK has also just been helping those who wish to return. The paper goes on to say that they are “exploring resuming enforced returns” to certain countries, including to Syria.

A consultation is to be launched on the enforced removal of families with children.

Appeals reform

The paper mentions increased judicial sitting days and statutory timelines, neither of which are new announcements. A new appeals body has also already been announced, although one welcome point to note here is the mention that “Early legal advice will be a core part of system reforms, avoiding delays and late claims, leading to better decisions”. Again, this needs to be present at application stage as well, so that many cases can avoid being wrongly refused in the first place, but any mention of the importance of legal advice is a positive.

There is also mention of accelerating certain cases, again this is a process that already exists in detained cases. They also mention “strengthening” the approach to certifying cases to remove the right of appeal. It is unclear whether anything new is being proposed here beyond further use of existing processes.

What is new is proposed legislation for accelerated appeals in “removable high-harm cases, foreign national offenders, and others who are detained and readily removable”, but no more detail than this is provided.

Fresh claims will seemingly require a paid application, this is a bit unclear but seems to be saying where the fresh claim is based on article 8. It is unclear what the process would be if e.g. it was a sur place claim (where the need for asylum only arose later on because of a change of circumstances in the country of origin). This change will be made via the immigration rules.

Legal reform

The paper also mentions that 86% of people who raised rights based applications in detention awaiting removal were released. A significant factor in this which goes unmentioned will of course be the decimation of legal aid advice generally, but particularly the removal of article 8 cases from the scope of legal aid, meaning that people are unable to access their rights at an earlier stage.

In response to the above two “problems”. Again, several changes are proposed.

The first is to:

legislate to set out to Home Office decision makers, and the courts, how to properly balance the public interest against individual rights. This intends to narrow the circumstances in which an individual’s Article 8 rights would outweigh the public interest in removing them.

The second is to set out in primary legislation a more narrow definition of family, largely restricted to immediate family members, with limited exceptions. The second is to change the application process for leave outside the rules applications based on article 8. Applications to bring people from outside the UK will need to be submitted by the UK based family member.

For in-country applications:

we will prescribe how and when Article 8 claims can be made. This will prevent migrants from frustrating removal by making late human rights claims, avoiding fees and relying on the courts to remake Home Office decisions, or in some cases having the courts consider Article 8 claims that have not even been considered by the Home Office.

This doesn’t make much sense to me and I can’t really see a change in here.

The third proposed change is to work with other countries to limit the definition of “inhuman or degrading treatment” in article 3 claims.

Other barriers to removal

The paper states that this process will be used to “target citizens of manifestly safe countries”. I will raise my usual concerns here that generally when countries are deemed “safe”, the safety of LGBTQI+ people is not considered. This will be one to keep an eye on.

Apparently processes and systems will be improved to ensure that they do not miss opportunities to deport foreign national offenders waiting for trial on other more minor offences.  

Part III: Safe and legal routes

All that the paper says is that:

To achieve this, we will:

• reform refugee sponsorship to give voluntary and community sector organisations a greater role in resettlement through named sponsorship, within caps set by government
• introduce a capped route for refugee and displaced students to study in the UK, helping talented refugees to continue their studies, realise their potential and be able to return to their country and help rebuild it as soon as circumstances allow
• establish a capped route for skilled refugees and displaced people to come to the UK for work, building on the experience of the Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot

It is proposed that those arriving through these routes will have to wait ten years before they can settle, this will be subject to consultation. It is unclear whether they will also have to renew their leave every two and a half years and live under the threat of removal during that decade.