Fast-track deportations to be announced as part of asylum reforms

Plans to step up the deportation of illegal immigrants as part of sweeping reforms to the UK’s asylum policy will be announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

In a statement to MPs later, he will outline plans to end numerous challenges to dismissal and overhaul human rights legislation.

Those granted asylum will only be granted temporary asylum and will be returned home if their country is deemed safe at any time. They will have to wait 20 years to apply for permanent settlement.

Mahmood will also say Britain will stop issuing visas to people from three African countries unless their governments improve co-operation on removing illegal immigrants.

“This is a moral duty for me because I can see illegal immigration tearing our country apart, dividing communities,” Mahmood told the BBC on Sunday.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp went further, saying he would deport asylum seekers who did not seek asylum “within a week”.

The plans have sparked criticism from some Labor MPs, including Rachael Maskell, who said the government was heading in the “completely wrong direction” on immigration.

The government wants to reduce the number of people arriving in the UK on small boats, and the reforms aim to speed up deportations of unsuccessful asylum seekers and foreign criminals and make it harder for successful asylum seekers to remain in the country.

Under the plans, people would be limited to raising their grounds of appeal in a single appeal and would be deported if the case fails.

The government will follow the Danish model in creating an independent body to speed up the deportation of foreign criminals and cases with little chance of success through the appeals system.

As part of the reforms, Mahmood wants to overhaul how human rights legislation applies in immigration cases, including Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which covers the right to family life.

Only those with immediate family in the UK, such as a parent or child, will be able to use Article 8 as a reason to remain.

The UK will work with other countries to reform Article 3 of the ECHR, which is designed to protect people against inhuman or degrading treatment.

The government believes this is being used to support unreasonable claims, including preventing the deportation of serious criminals because their health needs cannot be met.

Similarly, the Home Office said the Modern Slavery Act would be tightened to prevent claims from being repealed at the last minute.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the reforms would stop the “endless calls” to increase the dismissal of those “who have no right to be here”.

Mahmood said the reforms recognized that the “speed and scale” of immigration was destabilizing and dividing societies and would allow the government to accelerate the removal of those who had no right to be in Britain.

“We must restore order and control to maintain the generosity that allowed us to provide shelter,” he said.

Previously, the home secretary told the BBC he would create new safe and legal pathways for refugees through work and education pathways.

Under the new measures, tighter restrictions will be placed on successful asylum seekers, whose situation will be reviewed every two and a half years and who will be sent back if their home country is deemed safe.

To apply for permanent residence or indefinite leave to remain, a refugee will need to have resided in the UK for 20 years, instead of the current five years.

They will not be able to bring family members to join them unless they are immediate family members, including parents and children; Additionally, housing and weekly allowances for refugees will no longer be guaranteed.

Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with nearly 111,000 applications to be made by June 2025, official figures show.

The appeals system currently has a backlog of more than 50,000 and a waiting period of at least one year.

While there has been criticism of the proposed reforms from within the Labor Party, Mr Maskell said many of his fellow MPs were “really worried”.

She said it was important to have a robust human rights framework and described “reordering our relationship with the ECHR” as a “step too far”.

UK Reform leader Nigel Farage said the home secretary “appears to be a Reform supporter”.

“It is a shame that the Human Rights Act, the ECHR and its backbenchers mean this will never happen,” he added.

Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, said the government should “focus on processing requests quickly, getting it right first time and quickly deporting people who have no right to be here”.

Refugee Council Chief Executive Enver Solomon said that rather than deterring migrants, the 20-year period would “leave people in uncertainty and intense anxiety for years to come”.

Like First reported in the TimesThe visa ban threat to Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo comes after thousands of illegal immigrants and criminals from the three countries were said to be in the UK.

A Home Office source said the countries were targeted “due to unacceptably low cooperation and prohibitive return processes”.